Anyone want to venture back to those days when at least we knew where/wear we stood when it came to a dressing down. Photo: 1930s Yass picnic races by Sam Hood, State Library of NSW.
Writing a story this week about how more women are thriving in what was once a male-dominated industry made me almost put myself out of a job. Why are we still writing about this stuff?
Why is it still news that a woman can land a hammer when she needs to nail something? Why do we take her photo, laud and describe her with a dictionary worth of adjectives when she passes an exam she has worked hard to, well, hit top marks. (And don’t get me started on hammers. Why do they still sell those small pink ones. But that’s another painful story.)
Some of these women love to be interviewed. They want to tell you about everything they’ve ever done to get them where they are today, up there where they belong.
Whether it’s because of the breakfast cereal they couldn’t wake up without or because their mums always told them that nothing was impossible for them because Helen Reddy once sang so. But increasingly, most of them just want to tell you it’s what they do. It was the best/only job available at the time or they decided to learn how to repair power lines because that’s what their dad did, and they love their dad. His hands are always covered in bandages, but he’s still the best dad.
Adding on this extra baggage when it’s hard enough to secure a job you actually like these days, and earn enough money at it to pay rent and feed yourself and yours, can be heavy going.
The idea that we can be who we want to be, do what we want to do – even if you’re not a Master’s Apprentice – should be music to all our ears, albeit a couple of lifetimes ago.
But let’s just crack on and do it. No more stories about women who break through glass barriers. Most women I know would just break through and get on with it – but probably not before tracking down a dustpan and broom to clean up the broken glass.
Speaking of glass ceilings, I remember watching our first female PM being interviewed after she left the job, wrote a book and got offered a heap of fancy jobs in which at least one she was expected to save the world. It was just after she had had her official portrait painted when a journalist, a woman, asked why the portrait only went down to the bottom of her neck?
Because, said Gillard, she had spent too much of her prime ministership fending off questions about her weight, her clothes, her “tone” (whatever that was), and pretty much criticism of everything else below her neck, rather than who she was and what she stood for. So when it came to the official profile, this was where it was always going to be headed.
Next, let’s see if we can convince some wives of farmers to stop describing themselves as, er, wives of farmers. They’re usually the farmers. They have worked the land all their lives, were left it by their parents because they knew it better than its trees or the back of their crusty hands, and just smile that enigmatic smile when people lob on to their land in shiny boots while they, the farmers’ wives, are trying to do a million jobs at once – and not one of them involving making scones for shiny-booted visitors.
Have you noticed that the folk who don’t think they’re special, really are? Probably because they’re the last ones you’ll hear that from.
Now, if blokes could have babies? That’s a story.
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