This feminist thing. (Society).(gendered workplace)

I WAS ON THE BUS, going to work, when some interesting-looking passengers got on. They were two blokes, flannelette shirts, beanies, jeans, a bit scruffy. With them, they had two children, one a baby and the other a toddler. They negotiated their entry onto the bus, always a bit difficult with a stroller, with considerable aplomb. They had obviously done it before. They had the bag (nappies, bottles) and all the paraphernalia that inevitably attaches to going anywhere with kids. They made their way to the front group of seats and sat facing each other.

"Now," said the older to the younger. "What are we going to do about that fucking diff?" While the younger bloke bounced the baby on his knee and the toddler fiddled in his seat, a conversation--terse, colourful and liberally laced with expletives--ensued about a car they were repairing.

I felt greatly cheered by this experience. Men are actually quite good at child-minding and even housework, if women are prepared to give them a go. But their attitude towards these things is completely different from ours. If you're prepared to accept men's laundering (with special lint additive); men's house cleaning (highly selective) and men's child-minding (a bit on the basic side, but on the whole they complete their shift with as many children as they started with), you are well on the way to a more satisfactory division of labour.

There may still be some men who expect their wives to work, and who do not accept any responsibility for the housework. I suspect such troglodytes to be in the minority. In most cases, the greatest obstacle to achieving more equity on the home front is not men's reluctance to get involved. It is women's reluctance to accept the standards that men think are satisfactory.

The small band of households where the woman is the breadwinner and the man does the shopping and cooking, ferries the kids about, and does the cleaning, show what can be done when there is no alternative. Where roles are reversed, there may be resentment, but there is really no argument about who should be doing what. It is in the two-income household that the battle lines are drawn. Survey after survey shows that, in two-income households, it is the woman who does most of the housework, the woman who remembers the kids' birthdays, the woman who keeps the family networks in order.

Hiring household help might appear to be at least part of the answer. But too often, the prospect of another woman plumbing the domestic dust levels proves too awful to con template. There are practical problems, too. One man I know engaged a cleaner, but his wife spent so much time tidying the house in advance of the cleaner's arrival, they were no further ahead. As she explained, she wanted the cleaner to clean, not to tidy up. Her partner was perplexed by this. "I don't need to pick things up before I clean," he said. All too true. So enthusiastically did this man wield the vacuum cleaner that pencils, socks, even on one occasion a pair of tights disappeared into the machine, never to be seen again.

Whatever the household arrangements, in the space of a few decades we have witnessed a social revolution in attitudes towards married women working. It was not uncommon for men of my father's generation to refuse to allow their wives to work, even when the kids were old enough not to need full-time care. Now few families can afford to be without two incomes.