Cohousing-L Mailing List: SOme interesting quesitons about gender

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

Donnas editor for her cohousing article asked some quesitons I have not
heard on the list before which are some good food for thought. Here they
are:

What are the gender dynamics in cohousing groups? Are there any tensions
particular to male/female dynamics? Is work divided along traditional
gender lines or not? Do you find women doing the cooking and child care
in
cooperative situations, men doing the landscaping? Do you find that men
tend to dominate discussions about building, etc.?

(Warning: The following analysis is done by a male, a female perspective
might vary greatly)

At Sharingwood cooking,cleaning and landscaping are shared across
genders pretty equally. However, the building discussions tend to
attract mostly men, not all, but mostly. We have two contractors (male)
in our group who tend to be the "authority" on such things to the point
where on a few occaisions a female input was ignored, at least for a
bit.  The woman in question is pretty intolerant of such treatment
however and made a point about it. It was the only discussion I can
recall where gender treatment was brought up as an issue in a meeting.  

It has been an interesting experience to me that during the construction
work on our commonhouse, typically men would start the days work, but
the women would often be the last ones working. I remember sitting on
the roof, as we had about half of it on, and realizing that of 7 people
still working, I was the only  male.  We had started off with 7 men and
one women. There is a great deal of variation in who participates in
physical labor. There are some folks who are always involved, and some
folks who are rarely if ever involved, and this seems to be pretty well
spread across gender lines.

Childcare tends to be organized and done mostly by women. Last night for
example, three moms were in the playground with the kids, the men were
at the basketball hoop. The childrens committee is pretty much all moms.
The women tend to organize social events much more than men do.

After five years I have seldom heard any complaints or even comments
about gender roles.  But then, I am male and may not be in the loop for
such comments.  There are affinity groupings which seem to occur, like
several of the moms with small kids all group together.  There have been
very few gender specific events at Sharingwood over the years, something
I think is a lack. A womens night out happened once, and a mens poker
game happened a couple of times. 

In terms of influence and leadership there seems to be a balance towards
men. I would say the "dominant" influencial opinions in our group comes
about 70-30 male to female. There are women who are in leadership roles
and influencial, but most the real movers of things tend to be men. This
is somewhat ironic in that the community was founded by an elder woman.
For example, probably the two most influencial and busy committees right
now are the phase 2 and commonhouse committees. Both are largely made up
of men, most all the actions which precipitate out of those committees
are done by men. 

The childrens committee is mostly all women and most all the actions
which come out of that committee are done by women.  The process
committee has been pretty close to evenly balanced. The architectural
review committee is mostly men. It appears that our new commonhouse
maintenance and process committee is mostly women.

One incident I recall about implied sexism which is indicative I think
of our community to some extent.  A female  member walked by the
commonhouse and made a snide comment, kind of in jest, about how the men
all tended to flock to the construction work. One of the males turned
and handed her his hammer.  She sputtered a few times, picked up a nail
bag, then put on a row of siding. The male who gave her the hammer went
to the playground and pushed kids on the swing. Later the same male,
made a big pitcher of drinks and passed it out to the labor crew.  

The point being, no one is excluded, but people tend to do what they are
interested in. The women in the case above seldom participates in work
party efforts and is very involved with the kids. Its her choice to
make, and she does.  How much of this reflects cultural biases and
gender role "training" is unknown.  

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood