“I am joining the Ariel #ShareTheLoad campaign at BlogAdda and blogging about the prejudice related to household chores being passed on to the next generation.”
When I read about the Ariel contest on reducing gender prejudices and washing clothes my mind went back to my childhood when the ‘Dhobi’ used to come to our place to collect the laundry fortnightly and came back after 15 days to deliver the washed and pressed clothes. He and his wife took turns. It did not seem unusual back then that a man came to collect and deliver the laundry.
When I read about the Ariel contest on reducing gender prejudices and washing clothes my mind went back to my childhood when the ‘Dhobi’ used to come to our place to collect the laundry fortnightly and came back after 15 days to deliver the washed and pressed clothes. He and his wife took turns. It did not seem unusual back then that a man came to collect and deliver the laundry.
And when we traveled past the river
on the outskirts of our town both men and women could be seen washing heaps of
clothes and drying them.
However when families became
smaller and washing machines had not yet entered the household it was the
mother or the ‘kaamwaali’ who washed the clothes along with the household
chores which are considered ‘ womanly duties’.
And when the washing machines finally did enter the households it was
still the women who did the laundry as with all the other chores. Even the ‘kaamwaalis’
were taught to operate the machine.
As I grew up I saw this
transition and imbibed that indeed there are a set of different chores allotted
to both men and women. I longed to outsource the laundry as it was time
consuming and interfered with my free time. And I longed to go out with friends
on the weekends. But here I was stuck on
Sundays with the cleaning and the laundry of the entire week.
If I made any plans to go out
with friends on Sundays I made sure I did the laundry on Saturday nights. (I
work 6 days a week). It was always at the back of my mind that why the chores
can’t be shared? Why these prejudices?
The society has defined separate roles
for men and women and I learnt that these prejudices are imbibed and handed
down from generations. There is nothing womanly about washing clothes and
nothing manly about repairing the electric fuses in the house. These roles have
been defined to suit the dominant ‘male culture’ with women at the receiving
end. If my man washed the clothes it would not make him less manly. After all I
go out and work.
And the Ariel share the load drive
awakened my senses and I realized it’s time we women took up the challenge to
oust these prejudices. There is no such thing as male domain and female domain.
