Women work harder than men - phooey!

All this talk about unpaid work provides a convenient smokescreen diverting attention from the central fact that men’s hugely greater paid working hours make male earnings absolutely critical to the family enterprise. It may be very unfashionable to talk about men as breadwinners but that’s still the yoke that most partnered men bear.

Many years ago, I wrote an article for the Fairfax newspapers Good Weekend magazine about who gets the better deal in marriage. It was a real struggle getting the article approved by the feminist editor who didn’t approve of my attempts to include the male perspective on the issue.

Like the story I told about a Victorian teacher, Mary, who had been planning to retire early from her job. But then her surveyor husband, John, accepted his company’s early retirement package to pursue his life-long dream to work as an artist. When I interviewed Mary, her husband was painting three days a week and spending the rest of his time on community work. He was as happy as Larry.

Mary loved her job but wasn’t keen on spending ten more years in a very demanding, stressful position. “I’d prefer to be part-time but then I think, `No, I can’t. I have no choice.’”

She envied John’s freedom. “Who did you have lunch with today?” she’d ask him through gritted teeth. “I ask about his day and feel like stabbing him to death!” she said with a good-natured chuckle. She admitted she can’t understand why men aren’t complaining more about their side of the deal. “I don’t understand why it doesn’t build up more resentment.”

Well, we live in a society that is so busy highlighting women’s drudgery that men simply aren’t allowed to complain about being forced to work full-time all their lives to pay the mortgage, often in jobs they hate, whilst many women still have choices. They often have the option of dropping out of the workforce to care for young children and then, returning to shorter working hours if at all, and retiring far earlier.

The result, of course, is far less superannuation. I wrote two years ago exposing feminist myths about older impoverished women and privileged men, pointing out that women’s lower super is a direct result of a lifetime spent working less than men. They get to spend their partners’ higher earnings – women control the purse strings in most relationships - and they are usually beneficiaries of their partners’ retirement benefits.

Naturally, in a civilized world, there wouldn’t be a competition about who works harder. Sensible folk realise men and women must work as a team to share the burdens and rewards of family life. But that reality doesn’t suit the feminist narrative promoting winners and losers in their endless gender war.­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­           Finally, two funny little good news items.

The first emerged with the release of another survey from the ABS – this time the Personal Safety Survey, the source of Australia’s best data on domestic violence. The Australian  reported the exciting news that despite all the alarmist reporting predicting a second “pandemic” of domestic violence during lockdown, that violence actually fell during that period. This important news was ignored by all other media.

Back in August 2021 I wrote a blog about the feminists’ great covid domestic violence fundraiser which revealed that all the proper evidence at that time was showing no increase in violence. But despite this, the feminist’s lobbying produced an astonishing 150% increase in the domestic violence industry’s annual handout from the Feds –leaping from $100 to $250 million per annum at least until 2022-23.

Surely we can find some parliamentarians to ask questions in Senate Estimates suggesting this money be paid back, now that official proof is in that it was based on a fraud?

Then there was delightful news from ANROWS, one of the key feminist domestic violence propaganda units, showing we may be winning the propaganda war. Their latest four-yearly survey shows almost half of Australians believe women and men equally commit domestic violence, more than 1/3rd believe that women going through custody battles make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence, while a similar number believed it is common for sexual assault accusations to be used as a way of getting back at men.

The ABC naturally expressed much alarm at this development. But we were rejoicing. The truth is finally winning through. Hallelujah.