The ‘joys’ of being a woman

I’m too tired and too old,” says a friend at dinner. She’s a bit tipsy, because this isn’t the sort of thing she normally says. Also, she’s only 45. She’s eminently capable, a mother working from home, in charge of admin for the family business, while running their house, which means managing six lives.

“My eczema isn’t great at the moment,” says another friend. She’s a businessperson, chief breadwinner, and also household chief of staff.

Last year, her husband fell down a mountain overseas, breaking his back. Naturally, she arranged his repatriation, his care, their children, their home while he slowly recovered.

Six months later, he took an island holiday all by himself. He was tired, he said, because he’d never had that holiday after falling down the mountain. Naturally, she held the fort.

“Didn’t you need a holiday too?” I asked. She laughed. Lately, I’ve been swamped workwise, too.

I’m the chief cook and bottle-washer – or dishwasher packer – at home.

There’s a growing list of people I need to contact, organise, book, just as soon as I get a gap. We need a plumber, the carpets need cleaning, a man to fix the leaky roof, the windows need washing …

The bird feeders are empty, dog poo is piling up in the garden and the bins haven’t been emptied. And nobody has thought about what we’re having for dinner.

“We’ll get a takeaway,” says Himself on the phone. I race in at eight, root out some frozen pasta, cook up the last onions, garlic, chilli flakes and the remnants of a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, and that’s dinner sorted.

Here’s the thing people never talk about because they don’t see it: the mental load. It’s the person in every house who’s forever thinking ahead and overseeing the unseen: organising childcare and vacuum bags, wiping fridge shelves and plumping cushions, planning meals and stocking cupboards, arranging playdates and checking homework, buying milk, loo roll and light bulbs, changing sheets, replacing towels, laundering pet beds, managing workers, remembering birthdays, vaccinations, prescriptions, that the dentist is overdue…

It’s largely a female burden. It’s unpaid. It’s never-ending. And frankly it’s exhausting.

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