A friend sent me an interesting article from the Washington Post last week: More Women Are Picking Up Power Tools and Taking Over Home Repairs.
“Welcome to the latest field in which women are joining and sometimes outshining men — home repair. As the country’s demographics shift, more women are making more money and staying single longer than ever. Consider this seismic shift: There are nearly twice as many single female home buyers as there are single male home buyers, according to 2011 data from the National Association of Realtors. These women don’t have to rely on men to financially support them — but somebody still needs to rewire that light switch and unclog that drain. That somebody is them.
They are power women with power tools.”
That this is happening isn’t terribly surprising. But while it makes sense that single women would take these tasks on themselves, I also find it noteworthy that straight coupled women are also picking up the tools and handling these tasks. What really jumped out at me was when the authors of the book Dare to Repair: A Do-it-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home
It’s the “can’t or won’t fix it” that really piqued my curiosity. The article doesn’t expand on why either of these things are happening and how they might contribute to women doing more handiwork, but I’ve noticed since we bought our house that the can’t is a very real thing. While we may still believe as a culture that handiwork is the “last bastion of manliness,” as Hanna Rosin was quoted as calling it in the article, that doesn’t mean that young men are really being taught to do these things anymore, or even have an opportunity to do them, before they reach the point in adulthood when their garbage disposal quits working and they don’t have a landlord to take care of it. So they might believe that they should be able to do these things, and society might sort of assume they are able to, but that doesn’t mean they actually can. And here also seems to be a myth that home repair just comes naturally to men, so even if they’ve never done it, it can’t be that hard right?
But it often is hard (or harder than it looks), and acting like it’s not is kind of crappy for men, who are now stuck believing that just because they have testicles they should automatically be awesome with a jigsaw — and, conversely, if they aren’t good with a jigsaw the first time they pick it up, that that actually says something about their testicles. (I’m allowed to be terrified of using a jigsaw. Eric is not.) I know I get pretty pissy when I’m not good at something I’ve been told my whole life that I “should” be good at, so I can’t really blame any guy who feels insecure about his DIY skills. But how are they supposed to learn? I actually feel like plenty of men could benefit from the basic level classes that Home Depot is offering, but by calling them “do-it-herself” classes — which is great for women, don’t get me wrong! — they’re basically perpetuating the myth that men already know how to do these things.
The article also doesn’t mention how damn satisfying it is to build and fix things, especially something you’ve never tried before. Whether it’s baking a cake or hanging a door, both will give you that feeling of “HOLY SHIT I DID THAT!!!! No seriously…look what just happened when I followed the directions!!!” no matter your gender. I would imagine that that feeling of confidence and self-sufficiency is a big reason that men have traditionally enjoyed doing home repairs, and there’s no reason women wouldn’t want to get in on that action. Seriously, I felt amazing after I led our light-hanging project. Why would I let Eric have all of that fun?!
I also think it’s the kind of thing that grows once you get the reminder that you can do it. For women who have never tried this kind of thing before, seeing a female friend do it — or, quite often these days, a blogger — can be exactly what you need to have that, Oh, right, I could totally do this! moment. So as more women are taking this kind of thing on and sharing it in conversation or on Facebook, even more women are being subtly reminded that they can do the same.
Speaking of subtle reminders, I saw a Home Depot commercial a couple of days ago that featured a woman doing a project herself. (No husband or kids were shown, though presumably she could have had both.) That she was a woman wasn’t a point in the commercial, but it was a subtle reminder from Home Depot that women are their customers too. Given the fact that women clearly need/want to do handiwork, this sounds like smart marketing on their part. But I would love to see more reminders in general from tool companies and hardware stores that neither young men nor young women are guaranteed to have DIY skills these days, and that traditional gender roles shouldn’t keep any of us from feeling welcome to develop them.
Thoughts on all of this? How does this get handled in your household?
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It’s funny. The Boy handles a lot of our home repairs in our household because he knows how and I don’t, but he was raised in a family of DIY-ers, and I wasn’t. Not to the same degree. I had him hang our coathooks up while he was on vacation last week because they needed to be held up with anchors to stay up, and it occurred to me after he had done it that I really should have had him show me how, so I would know for next time. BUT, we both know how to use the power tools, where they are kept, and when to call in an expert.
deva at deva by definition recently posted..Verbing it Up in the New Year: 2013
Such an interesting topic! I’ve lived alone for most of my adult life – Including college – So I’ve always either done something myself, gotten ahold of the landlord if it was major, or hired someone to take of it if I was short on time.
Now that I’m in a serious relationship I’ve found that this hasn’t changed much. Not because he isn’t capable – He’s actually incredibly handy – It’s because he doesn’t doesn’t take care of it in a timely manner. When I need something to be done, I need it to be done. Right then. i.e. I want to check it off my To Do List immediately. There are few things in life I hate more than “nagging” which is what’s required to get him to do *anything* so I just do it myself!
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Good point about young people not being taught as many DIY skills as in the past. My dad is a DIY guy, but I wasn’t interested in learning anything until I bought my own home (yes, I’m one of the single female home buyers). I have 2 of my own toolkits, while my boyfriend didn’t own a single tool until I bought him 2 screwdrivers for Christmas (I figured a guy needs to have his own screwdrivers). I do most of the fix-it projects around the house because I actually take the time to measure, level, and read the directions, while he’d rather just hack at things with a hammer, duct tape, and superglue.
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“he’d rather just hack at things with a hammer, duct tape, and superglue.” I literally just snorted at that.
Also, don’t even get me started on people not reading the directions. I feel like 99% of being good at this stuff is just READING THE G-D DIRECTIONS!!!
I’m curious — have you asked your dad to teach you this stuff now that you’re interested or did you learn another way? I just ask because my mom is great at all this stuff and without her nearby, I am missing a valuable resource for learning more, so I’m someone who needs to take classes or read a ton of blog posts before I try something new!
This is a great post and brings up so many interesting points. Not only have I known how to fix a garbage disposal since I was about 15, but my MOTHER and I updated the plumbing in our old bathroom when I was 18. I’ve always been raised in a house where women can and (by necessity as well as desire) do work on home repairs. The way my fiance and I have worked it out – he’s electrical, I’m plumbing and we both work on asthetics. That said I have some serious doubts about the way society sets men up for failure these days – it seems as though in the pursuit of feminism the male ego is often ignored. I appreciate that this post touches on that point as well.
This was actually a topic of conversation over Thanksgiving in my family. My mom’s brothers are all very handy. My uncle is currently building a patio and the discussions between him and his brothers were interesting as they debated techniques. On the other hand, my dad isn’t very handy – he can get simple things done like fixing a light switch or tile the bathroom but if a pipe bursts, he’s calling a plummer and probably asking a friend to re-plaster the ceiling. My uncles don’t necessarily looking down on him, but they do tease him about being more willing to pay a professional than learn himself (that being said, he does have a tendency to hang around said professionals and ask tons of questions just to pick up some basic info). My dad always taught me that there’s no shame in paying someone to get it done so it gets right the first time, but whenever he learns something new and easy, he calls me and shows me how to do it myself. He always says he’s prefer I learn how to do all of it myself so I don’t have to call strange men into my home/apartment to fix things.
On the other hand, with my super handy uncles, things are half fixed for a while while they try to find the time to get all their fix-its done. I think sometimes my aunts would prefer my dad’s approach :)
And jigsaws completely freak me out, as do all thing with spinning blades. I do know how to use them from construction based mission trips in high school, but I’d prefer to stay far away.
Growing up it was mainly my Mom doing the fix it stuff. With the exception of plumbing and electrical. Most of the time it wasn’t that my Dad couldn’t do it. He was just lazy to a ridiculous degree. So rather than wait 6 months to a year or longer for him to get around to doing something (or “find the time” as he put it though most of his time was spent in front of the tv) she’d either learn how do it herself or pay someone else to do it. Since my brothers and I were her assistants in many of the projects, we know how to do a lot of repairs and building projects.
So this touches on the “won’t” part of the “can’t or won’t” in the article…something I don’t have any experience with, but am equally curious about! I’m frustrated by the idea that women are doing this stuff for the same reasons your mom did, because their partners are simply unwilling. I think it’s so easy for women to fall into that “well he won’t do it [or he doesn't do it well] so I’ll just do it myself” trap and I find that really troubling. It’s great that your mom did it and taught you and your brothers to do it too, but I can’t help but be irritated by the fact that your dad wouldn’t do it! Did it bother your mom/you?
Oh yes it bothered both of us. A LOT. Especially since it wasn’t just with repairs and building. He wouldn’t help out around the house and didn’t really care if my brothers didn’t either. In theory, we all had chores we were supposed to do around the house but only I got yelled at by him if I didn’t do them. Though he was never stupid enough to say so when my mother was around, he heavily implied that it was my “job” to do things around the house becasue I was the girl and that’s why he didn’t care if my brothers chose not to help out. But then if housework was our “job” because we were female and we ended up doing the majority of the tool/repair work too I’m not sure what his job was.
“…they might believe that they should be able to do these things, and society might sort of assume they are able to, but that doesn’t mean they actually can.” Umm… YES. The longer I live with my boyfriend, the more I come to realize that traditional gender roles aren’t hard on the women alone. The day we moved into our apartment, Josh insisted on setting up the washing machine, even though I knew how to do it myself–and we ended up with a flooded washroom. I don’t point that out to embarrass him or make myself seem super-handy (I’m not), but I think it’s worth noting that men DO feel like they have a responsibility to take care of the handy work, even when they don’t know what they’re doing. We’ve come across this in plenty of DIY tasks over the past few months, and I’m still learning that he may not know everything he is “supposed” to know. (Heck, I don’t know how to sew more than a few stitches, so why should he have to know how to hook up a washing machine the first time?) I’m also having to learn to be patient when he wants to figure it out, but that’s another story.
Another point on this: my mom was a single woman from the time I was 7 years old and had to perform the tasks of both mom and dad. I remember her single-handedly moving heavy-ass furniture when I was a kid and putting together a swing set for my sister and me one Christmas night (then giving all the credit to Santa). She passed that fend-for-yourself attitude to my sister and me, and now I try to learn how to do traditionally male jobs, just in case Josh isn’t nearby or he doesn’t know how (next on my list: changing my own tire).
Last thing (and I’m totally boasting here): I recall having to teach my high school boyfriend how to check the oil in his car. He didn’t know where the dip stick was, so I had to show him. I thought that was so bizarre because that was the first thing my dad taught me when I got a car (maybe the second, right behind checking tire pressure–another thing I had to teach this dude).
Okay, I’m done.
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So many good points here! First of all, this: “I’m also having to learn to be patient when he wants to figure it out, but that’s another story.” Yeeeeup. And yeah, I’ve definitely experienced a lot of what you have. Also funny that you pointed out that you didn’t want to embarrass him with your comment; I had similar feelings as I wrote this, and then I was like, But why is that embarrassing at all?! But I think we know it totally can be, even if it shouldn’t be.
Also, I’m curious how much of this shift has to do with more single mothers (or even married mothers raised by single mothers…so single grandmothers, I guess) raising their kids to be more self-sufficient. I know that even though I maybe chose not to have my mom teach me to do stuff (something I really regret now), watching her do it always made me feel like I could if I wanted to. I think it’s awesome that more women (and dads too!) are passing that along to their daughters, because really, these are just good survival skills. Hopefully in the coming years we’ll see both sexes learning to do a bit of everything!
Neither of my parents are particularly “handy” (crafty? yes. but not handy.) so fixing things was never gendered one way or another. R grew up with her uncle and dad earning supplemental money by painting houses, hanging trim, and doing carpentry and this wasn’t something she showed any interest in so she never learned. In a same-gendered household neither of us feel any pressure to be the one who knows how to do stuff, but we have various strengths. R can hammer a nail better than I can (although I know how!) and I gag less at plunging a toilet. She has more patience than I do in following directions for putting stuff together (although I’m good at following orders!). I’m much more tech-oriented (which resulted in R sending out a mass email to all our friends announcing I was right, the first time, when I told her how to set up our sound system) and neither of us is good with hanging things straight (insert joke). We also live in a rental so we do get the luxury of calling our management company when things go horribly wrong… I think that’s something about home ownership that scares me, the expense of upkeep if neither person knows what the fuck they’re doing. It’s like a joke “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?”
My husband comes from an incredibly handy family (his dad made almost all the wooden furniture in our house) but he has no desire to do anything more than change a lightbulb. Definitely an example of “won’t”. He would gladly hire someone to do stuff or call one of dads or uncles. On the other hand, I was my dad’s shadow and learned a lot while he did home repairs and the like. I’m more likely to pick up the tools to do it myself after consulting several websites to get directions.
When it comes to typical gender roles though, our house is the opposite. Ken cooks and cleans and I do the more typical “manly” jobs. We just play to our strengths and interests.
Before farming, Ben always somehow knew how to do home fixes/improvements. I guess he had more exposure growing up than I did, but I’ve never had the impression his parents made a point of teaching him those types of things. For example, the first time I used a power drill I was trying to figure out how to change the direction to remove a screw, and Ben pointed to one of the unlabeled buttons. I was like how did you know it was that one? He just shrugged like I dunno “that’s just how power drills work”.
I learned so much on the farm that now I can hold my own in the DIY department. I still have a lot to learn but I’m significantly more comfortable with home repair.
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My boyfriend loves to fix things. Loves it. Home repairs, car repairs, whatever– he really enjoys it, and he’s good at it. That said, I’ve always lived alone, or lived with roommates who could not or would not do things, so I’m pretty good myself at asking the internet how to repair/install/clean/debug whatever needs it. So, I’m more than happy with him jumping in to do it (especially with auto maintenance, keeping up with which is one of my serious shortcomings as a human being), but sometimes I have to remind him that I can, in fact, do things myself.
My husband and I are mildly handy, we can usually get most things done or muddle through together. We both grew up with handy families too (in the same vein, we both grew up with families that cooked so we have basic cooking skills too). I also grew up in girl scouts (from kindergarten through HS) so I learned a lot of basic skills that way like changing a tire and checking oil.
I agree that it is probably difficult for men who don’t have those skills, but no more difficult than women who don’t have cooking or cleaning skills. And I am now tired of feminism being used as an excuse by men. I read an article that said obesity was partially due to feminism. Women stopped cooking at home so much and apparently it was too much for men to cook? We should all share and learn to do basic housework either way.
Ugh, feminism as an excuse is ridiculous. But I do think that we can’t ignore the effects feminism (or any social change) has on both men and women. Sure, men should adapt, but we do need to ask why they haven’t (if, in fact, they haven’t). If it’s just because of ego or their own ideas about what men “should” do, that sucks, and it’s something that needs to be addressed. (Though not by most of the terrible people who are writing articles like the one on obesity.) And the solution isn’t “well women need to stop building things” or even “men need to get over it”…I think it’s more complicated than that.
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