Man, oh man – just give us a shoulder to lean upon.
Women can have it all, according to businesswoman Helen Fraser, but first they need to learn how to find a husband, who is not just a domestic god, but her career advocate. Treat it like a job, she toots, be “ambitious”.
So here we are, 60 years after the sexual revolution, 60 years after former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Helen Gurley Brown put the sisterhood in a spin when she said “love, sex and money” was a highly achievable goal for females, still trying to think of ways women can blaze a trail in business.
Drop a GCSE, says Fraser, chief executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust, and make room at school for a lesson in hunting down a partner, “a cheerleader for you through your triumphs and setbacks”.
True, I could count on one hand the number of men who would congratulate their other half for bowling in through the door at 2am after a hard day at the office. But a woman is not the professionally suppressed beast she once was.
Today’s woman knows what her worth ought to be in a boardroom of suits as much as she knows about the uphill slog it is to get there. This is especially if she is associated with a self-seeking companion, or even a hapless swain. These are the kind of men who should be taking a lecture from Fraser, not women.
A man who won’t understand the reciprocal nature of a relationship, and the right of both parties to flourish outside of it, doesn’t deserve to be in one at all.
But there is another point to all this. Does the female sorority really want it all? Surely, all we want is harmony when our multiple lives collide, and a partner to strut things up when there is none.
We want to have career goals and the opportunity to aspire to them. To give love and be loved. Not to be sidelined in one place when we’re stretched at another. And if we want a family, we don’t want to be pilloried for putting the tots in childcare.
See, we don’t want it all. Wanting it all is wanting world domination, and this could only fray us at every conceivable edge. And anyway, someone’s got to do the dishes.
Should women be taught to find a husband?
