Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Gender roles

[WOLF1GDSFM (WOLF1GDSFM]

In a message dated 00-12-30 00:42:08 EST, MartyR707 [at] aol.com writes:

<<I was the first to write and say that men regulary and willingly 
 do clean-up here at Two Acre Wood. >>

Thanks, Marty (aka Martha)!

The only time there is a problem is when a woman wants to do a traditionally 
"male" job and is discouraged from it for gender reasons (or vice versa).  
This happened to me in a christian intentional community (which I left).  
However, I have not found this to be the case here at Sunward Cohousing.  It 
seems that not too many women want to do the "male" jobs, but if they want 
to, they can.  Now I am about to see what happens when I try to get more 
involved in building maintenance.  No one has prevented me from taking care 
of the leak in the basement or repairing the faucet in the laundry room!  Of 
course, no one knew I did it.  I suspect that they are just happy that it is 
done.

Another phenomenon I have seen is that of people expecting discrimination of 
a certain sort and then seeing any negative input as resulting from that 
discrimination.  Because I have not had the training that the boys got years 
ago, I may not know as much about repairs as some men.  My work may be 
rejected bacause it is not up to standard.  I don't think that I can blame 
cohousing for this--the direction for what I learned came from the school 
system and my parents.  In fact, cohousing is the first place outside of work 
that I have been able to put a toe out into the so-called "male" work and not 
be immediately discouraged.  In fact, when I helped build the storage rooms, 
the men showed me how to use the tools, and then let me work on my own.

Jan
Sunward
Ann Arbor, MI