The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[Sundae]

Both my grandmothers were financially subservient to my grandfathers.
My Nanny - the one I knew and spent a lot of time with - was a very difficult woman (possible mental health issues) married to a very gentle man.
My other grandmother, who died when I was a baby, was married to a very difficult man who did not support her or the family. They stayed married, of course, but the amount of money he handed over for "housekeeping" barely fed them. And he then complained about the meals.
It is such a familiar story of the time - books and plays mention it all the time, whether it's a feature of the plot or just an incidental detail.

Great Aunt Alice stayed a spinster (awful word) to further her career and then look after her parents. She had to make a choice.

Mum handed over the family's finances to Dad, with pretty poor consequences. He was - and is - an impulse spender. Something I either learned or inherited. They are comfortable now, although Grandad's small inheritance and Auntie Alice's certainly helped. But it's more from Mum's pensions, which she did not tell Dad about, and felt she didn't need to as they were taken directly from her pay-packet.

So this is one and two generations ago. Women - strong women - still being financially dependent on men. Not sharing the costs.

Life has changed. Or should have changed. I grew up sharing the costs. I'm poor. I explain this at the outset of any evening out - I'm willing pay my way or I don't go. Men and women have been kind enough to pay for me, but I do not expect it or think it's rude if they don't.

The rich don't count. They've always had different rules.
And maybe the middle class did too.
But where I came from, no woman was seen as frail - unless she was actually ill.
She just had to hand her life over to her man. And if she worked all day and still came home and cooked and cleaned and blacked the stove, she'd better make sure she cleaned the steps, or her neighbours would stop by to find out why not.

FTR, all of the above is simply anecdotal and not really meant to be a rebuttal.
Y'all know I'm not really anti-male.
I'm just sharing.

[Lamplighter]

...Great Aunt Alice stayed a spinster (awful word) to further her career
and then look after her parents. She had to make a choice....

My family has one of those on both sides of my family tree.
On each side, it was the the youngest girl.

And even as a kid it bothered me.
Why should the youngest girl be the one who did not leave home
to have her own family, or go to college, or have a career of some sort ?

Now, all my G-parents, aunts, and uncles have passed, except the one on my Dad's side,
and she is 91 living alone in the family home ... even her aged dog has passed.

And it still bothers me - what might have been ...

.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Sundae

It is such a familiar story of the time - books and plays mention it all the time, whether it's a feature of the plot or just an incidental detail.

Showing up in books and plays is a pretty good indication is was common, or at least common enough, to lend reality to the story.

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

And it still bothers me - what might have been ...

Ours was Aunt Dot, but I don't feel bad for her, she did it her way and a damn good job of it I think.

[Lamplighter]

I think I've established a definitive gender checkpoint,
right here in the Moms Hate Christmas: thread

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

...
As the wife/mother, you have to buy the presents for everyone.
Extended family is hard enough, but now you have to add all of his family
--people whose tastes you don't know and may actively dislike. ...

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

Send everyone a gift card for Amazon.
"Prime if you like them" ... "Non-Prime" if you don't.

[xoxoxoBruce]

We were talking mostly about American women joining the WW II workforce, but Brit women, of course, did too.

[xoxoxoBruce]

'Cause everybody knows raising kids and running the household isn't hard work.


But now we're worried, so skedaddle on home, and let us never speak of this again.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Women have always invented stuff, especially poor women trying to make do are forced to adapt, recycle and rube Goldberg new things. A lot of beauty products have been brought to market after being concocted in some woman's kitchen. All this is well known although not always acknowledged, 'cause we don't want y'all to get uppity.

There's a couple other things women have invented, like;
The Apgar Scoring System
Signal Flares
The foot-pedal trash can
The Monopoly Game
The paper bag
The dishwasher
Windshield wipers
The solar house
The circular saw
Kevlar
Just to name a few.