Women's work

Over spring break my boyfriend and I moved into our first house together. We had a lot of help from my younger brother and friends. But all of our friends that helped move were male. The only people who were involved with the move that were female was myself and one female friend. The guys did all the heavy lifting and us girls did all the cleaning of the new place before hand. We did do some moving, but mostly of things like clothes and smaller boxes and bags. I forgot what exactly it was that I asked my boyfriend to do as we have started to unpack and get settled (something to do with cleaning I imagine), and he told me he would not do it because it was "women's work". He said this in a quasi joking manner, but proceeded to go into the garage and ignore my request. Now when it came to the heavy lifting I was willing to play the "that is man's work" card, but when it was turned on me I did not like it. I think of this as being an odd double standard. Sometimes I think men take pride in what is considered to be "man's work" and when it is something I do not want to do I will let men go around saying that and excluding me. But if it is something that I want to I will challenge them to allow me to try. I also don't have a problem doing some "women's work" because when I have seen the men in my life attempt it they don't do the job up to my standards. But sometimes I just want them to quit being such a neanderthal and clean the frickin bathroom, or something along those lines.

In the movie we watched in class last week "Kick Like A Girl" the best girl soccer team was moved into the boy's league to give them a greater challenge. This was something the girls were up to doing and showed the boys what they were made of. It was interesting to see the reactions of the little boys versus the boy's parents. The boys were accepting of the girls in their league and gave them credit where credit was due, while their parents made excuses as to why the girls were beating their boys.

I wonder if men use the men's/women's work standards to get out of doing dirty or repetitive tasks like cleaning like how I sometimes look over the prejudice of men's work when I do not want to do something like heavy lifting. I also wonder if guys who have grown up in a world where responsibilities and work would be able to embrace women into what they would consider their fields of work like the boys in the movie did, or if they tend to make excuses like the parents of the boys. The movie made me think that to better have males and females get along throughout life, they should not be separated at young ages in things like sports. This practice teaches boys that they are better than girls, and teaches girls that boys are better than them. This is not a good message to send to children, as this is how gender stereotypes about the abilities of both sexes get replicated from generation to generation.