The great George Seddon, who helped create the diverse newspaper women’s pages we have today, once said (when I had spilled something over him): “There’ll be no equality for women until they get three hands.”
Three hands we may not have, but a recent Late Night Woman’s Hour showed a variety of lives in which the ability to cope with at least three things at once seemed crucial. A number of us described what we did and had done under the heading of “My Time”, which can be interpreted several ways. Some were of commerce, some of education.
Amanda Owen is a shepherdess with eight children; Mags MacKean is an author and an expert on mountains. As they described their work and their histories it seemed that one thing they had in common was that “my time” was never just one thing. They had, in various ways, to cope with a family life, a personal life and the requirements of serious work.
Women’s skills may vary in endless ways, but we all seem to have the almost built-in ability to do several things at once. It’s not just a matter of combining a job with a family – it can often be much more complicated than that. Perhaps we’ve acquired this ability because men will probably not let us off the more tiresome things they don’t want to do themselves.
So for us to enjoy the more rewarding ones we must do both; and even traditional home mothers need to be good at cooking and washing without neglecting the hungry and grubby little ones.
I’m not saying men don’t do this, too – the editor reading this may well be singing and smoking and doing sums in his head for all I know. I’m just saying it’s women for whom it is essential.
What do you think? Have your say below
