The Worth of A Woman’s Work
In a recent conversation with another woman who grew up in the ranching culture of the U.S., I found a rare brand of comfort in our shared understanding of the complexities of gender roles for western women.
Although gender roles and women’s rights were changing during my youth in the 1970s and ‘80s from what they were in the early 20th century, in this part of the world, the expectations and freedoms of women were more unaffected than in other, more urban areas of the country. For eventhough women were still living under the long-held rules of many a double standard, there was an off-breed kind of freedom and rule-bending out here in the West that had been going on for some time.
The cold hard truth of the matter was (and still is to a large extent) women out here have been granted the “freedom” and “right” to do many of the same jobs as the men simply out of necessity.
How many farmers and ranchers have relied on the labor of their wives as a convenient “hired hand”—scooping bunks, haying cows, packing silage, raking hay, running for parts, hauling bulls, or any one of a thousand other tasks carried out through the seasonality of making one’s living from the land? Women of the west have been doing “men’s work” since the westward progression of the European settlers in the 1800s.
As a young girl I was accustomed to helping in the fields—putting up hay and working summer fallow, driving truck for grain harvest and putting up silage—and working cattle. There was no consideration for the fact that I was female. No special attention or accolades given. I was happily willing, and the work needed doing, so it was more of an “all hands on deck” attitude than anything.
However, even within the loosened restrictions of gender roles, just because I was allowed to do the man work, in no way relieved me of the expectation that I was still to do the woman’s work.
Many was the day I would be in the field shortly after sunup, work until noon, at which time we’d go to the house for dinner, where I was expected to help my grandmother dish up the food, set the table, and finish any last minute mashing of the potatoes, stirring the gravy. Then after dinner, when the men went to rest and relax, I helped clear the table, wash the dishes and clean up the kitchen. By the time I finished with that, the men were up and ready to get back into the field.
(No rest for the weary.)
So when the second feminist movement of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s was underway, and women were beginning to realize that working in the man’s world wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you were still expected to do all the women’s work on top of your 60-hour work week climbing the corporate ladder, that scene was old hat to me.
By then, I was a mother of young children, and co-owner with my husband of 3 restaurants in Southern California. Our work life and division of labor was much like the familiar dynamic I experienced on the farm. I helped at the restaurants—chopping onions, hiring and training the help, running errands, handling the books—while also keeping house, mowing the yard, re-tiling the bathroom, cooking the meals, all with a baby on my hip and another hanging off my skirt.
Many was the day I ruefully thought how having just a 40-hour/week job to go to would have felt like a vacation, and how much I desperately needed a “wife” of my own—someone to cook and clean house, wash and fold clothes, and see to all those oh-so-necessary unseen details that keep family life chugging on. And that’s not to say my husband wasn’t involved in the raising of our kids or the care of our home. He did change diapers and brought home take-out on occasion, and took the kids on outings to give me time and space to rest—when time allowed. But then I can also remember people lavishing him with praise, presumably for “going above and beyond” for those efforts, commenting on how fortunate I was to have a such a husband. And indeed I was.
With my two daughters now grown and living in a time that views and treats women and gender roles differently than how they were when I was their age, at the end of the day, it is biology that still trumps all where gender roles are concerned, at least with motherhood.
I do find it interesting that even today, especially here in ranch country, it is not uncommon to find women who vehemently eschew any association with feminism—treating the mere word itself like a loaded gun aimed at the nearest man’s groin.
But my argument under the feminist banner was never about doing the same work as the men (as western women, we’ve been there - done that, many times over) but rather, how much the work that women commonly fulfill, is so often undervalued.
While much of the quiet effort that goes into keeping a home and wrangling toddlers, on the surface, doesn’t seem nearly as prestigious as running a big-dollar business, it is, in fact, what molds the future more than any money-making endeavor.
