Working from Home
Word has become a derogatory termDon't say 'housewife'EDMONTON — Call her a homemaker, a working parent or even a yummy mummy — just don’t insult a woman by referring to her as a “housewife.” SALLY JOHNSTON |
|
 [ 2006-01-05 ] |
To find out, take this test by eCareerFit, the career assessment experts.
Since the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, “housewife” has become a derogatory term, says the author of a new Canadian history book on the topic.
“There was a tremendous reaction against the housewife of the ’50s who stayed home in suburbia and did her vacuuming in her high heels and was supposed to serve her man,” said Rosemary Neering, who penned The Canadian Housewife: An Affectionate History (Whitecap).
“Today the negative stereotype of the housewife is that she is brainless.”
But housewives weren’t always so maligned.
“For three centuries, Canadian women were very proud to call themselves housewives,” said Neering by phone from her home in Victoria, B.C.
“They were proud of being cooks and good seamstresses and even when they were poverty-stricken you’d find them doing embroidery on flour sacks because they wanted to beautify their homes.”
Indeed, housewives were the backbone of early Canada.
“Historians say that one of the main reasons for the failure of the first colony in the 17th century was that there were no women to cook and sew, harvest and hoe.”
However, as Neering pointed out:
“Whether they had a choice was another matter.”
Her book traces the cultural history of this feminine icon from the 1600s with the first Acadian women — who lit their houses with whale oil lamps — to the jellied marshmallow salad days of the 1950s.
It gives snapshots of various eras with quotes, recipes, historical illustrations and advertisements, household hints and excerpts from books, journals and magazines.
“I ended the book in the ’50s because it seems to me that’s where we no longer had the full-time, lifetime housewife as an absolute standard for society,” said Neering.
She has no hankering for the so-called “good old days.”
“The best era for women has to be now. Technical advances such as washing machines and vacuums have made the tasks of housewifery so much easier. And feminism has given us choices.”
That said, many modern women create unnecessary stress by holding themselves to impossible standards: “A friend of mine has gone through a great deal of adversities, including cancer, but I think one of the toughest things of her life was deciding to let her house be untidy.”
Would you ever work for a social or charitable enterprise in the third sector?