Woman's Evolution

I’ve been thinking about woman’s changing roles over the last century.  From the beginning of World War I to today we have seen dramatic changes in women’s lives, everything from the liberation of her clothing through education, voting, careers and raising families.  Psychologically I wonder how far women have evolved since they are balancing much more than they had done in times gone by.  Just evaluating my own “load” I realize that unless I am doing any evaluating I have no idea how much I am trying to do in a day or a week. 

It might seem like a piece of cake to “run a household” but single or married there is a variety of duties that must be done in a respectable household, and this is on top of putting in a 10 hour day at a job (figure on the commute to be included, in my case it’s 12).  Cooking, washing dishes, putting things away, shopping for groceries, laundry, cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming, dusting, putting away more things; it is an endless round.  Then there’s the outside of the home, shovelling snow, cutting grass, planting the summer garden, watering the plants.  Then there is the annual caring for the house, as in painting trim, caulking, staining decks, and whatever else you find falling apart.

Then there are the social obligations, even if it’s a pleasure to keep in touch with friends it is still time consuming to get quality time with friends and family.  Somewhere in the day you are supposed to squeeze in time for yourself but even if you manage to find the time there seems to be incredible guilt for “squandering” the time from something perceived to be more essential.  Perhaps that means you feel you should be volunteering somewhere or simply doing more to support others.  Rare is it that a woman sits still and enjoys quiet time.

In recent years there has been a lot of noise about work life balance but like so many other things we hear about, we hear about it but we are not really listening and certainly we are not practicing what we have learned.  Somehow I do think that women didn’t really win any battle when they liberated themselves.  It was more bondage disguised as freedom simply because they were free to go outside the home.  The ultimate winner in this battle was the tax man who now had two incomes to tax from instead of one.

Whose sorry now?