Suffrage

OK - not really about beer...but I promise beer will come into it.

It seems appropriate for a woman who doesn't, in all honesty, quite fit the traditional (and increasingly outdated) model of "A. Real. Woman." to say something about what it is to be a woman 100 years after some women (my grandmother wouldn't have been eligible at the time) got the vote.

Actually, I have to say I've been enormously fortunate in my *ahem* fifty-something years.

My father frequently did both laundry and cooking in our household as his shift patterns allowed more lattitude than my mum's frequently unsociable hours.  He never complained.

Having requested a haridryer for Christmas, and it arriving without a plug attached (that's right, children, we had to put our own plugs on things, and even when the appliance failed you never threw good plugs away) my dad said "it's about time you learned to put plugs on things" and proceeded to teach me.  I was nine.

When hands were needed around the house for whatever task - wall papering, painting, woodwork, fixing the washing machine, making pies or stew - it didn't matter what gender you were, you helped.

These were the first steps for feeling an equal member of society - even though our society (five in our immediate family) was a pretty small sample.  Actually, it extended wider since my Aunt's household (where I also spent a significant portion of my time) had no time for "that's a man's/woman's job".

Work, when I started it, was less equal.  But having been given a good grounding in both sticking up for myself and having no truck with "that's a man's job" I didn't take all that much notice of the apparent barriers.

My first long-term partner - the man that was so desperate to introduce me to the delights of beer (there, you knew it was coming) was from a family like mine.  Men and women alike just getting on and doing what's needed.  As a result, and in spite of an education in a seminary of all places, he loved that learned to love beer, he loved that I enjoyed a spot of DIY, in fact my love of computers was what got us together in the first place.  I didn't need to assert my equality with him - he never doubted it.

And now, my Best Beer Buddy - again delighted, not threatened, at my interest in beer, sport (sometimes), computing, electronics and so many other things not traditionally aligned with my gender.  Never once makes me think he sees me as anything less than a equal partner.  Yes, we do different things around the house; in work and in household projects but that's because the best work comes when you play to your strengths.

So I'd like to give a shout out, on this day of all days, not only for the women who started the fight for equality but for the men who have never doubted that equality was a right, proper and thoroughly desireable thing to have.

Oh, and DRINK MORE BEER!