
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 21, 1995                   TAG: 9507210085
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WOMAN'S WORK IS NEVER DONE

``GO, SISTER, go!'' Is there a woman in America whose heart is not echoing that message to Mrs. Aline Poythress of Rockingham County? The shining example of the 53-year-old farm wife just might do more to advance equality of the sexes - and family values - than Geraldine Ferraro, Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton and the entire membership of the National Organization for Women could imagine.

The shining example:

Frazzled housewife gets ticked when, while she's away, her husband and son turn the house into a pigsty. When they laughingly refuse to do anything to help her clean up the mess, she gets really angry and rebels. She drags a straightback wooden chair to her front lawn - and sits.

And sits - reading a book under her homemade sign, ``Farm wife on strike.''

And sits - until her menfolk, embarrassed by the attention she's getting from passing motorists and the news media, agree to sign a contract requiring them to share a few domestic chores.

Don't dismiss the story as just a light read. It's a wake-up call on a serious inequity in contemporary culture. Mrs. Poythress is every woman - be she housewife, secretary, waitress, teacher, doctor, lawyer or CEO - whose family, especially the males, blithely assumes that all the homemaking responsibilities are hers.

To be sure, it's not a new problem. Since the Stone Age, males have tended to dismiss familial needs - homemaking, child-rearing, care-giving - as ``women's work.'' Worse, many males do not even recognize it as work; they seem to think it's a sinecure for the occupationally impaired and intellectually challenged. (Not so many decades ago, many husbands - asked what their wives did - would smile and say, ``Oh, nothing. She's a housewife; she doesn't work.'' Some aren't much more enlightened today.)

Today, about 57 million American women are employed outside the home, accounting for 45 percent of the labor force. They are on hundreds of career tracks, and increasingly they are shattering glass ceilings - often earning more than their husbands. Have they left housework behind them? Ha!

It is waiting for them when they get home in the evenings. No matter how exhausted, women in the overwhelming majority of households are still expected to buy the groceries, fix the dinner, wash the dishes, vacuum the rugs, do the laundry and help the kids with their school lessons.

Their husbands may agree (``later, hon'') to take out the garbage. But many men think their principal domestic duty is operating the TV remote control while they sit and relax after a hard day at the office - without a pang of guilt that their wives are stretched to the breaking point.

It's time for more American women to follow Mrs. Poythress' lead: Demand a fairer deal.

She's definitely on to something. Contracts are all the rage these days - Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, the Christian Coalition's Contract with the American Family. How about this one: Let every family agree, in spirit if not in writing, to a contract recognizing that Mom isn't Superwoman and that responsibilities for home and family life belong to everyone in the family.

by CNB