Just hanging out looking manly, wondering what blue jobs to do
Confession: I think this is a crock. It bothers me that “pink and blue jobs” rates as a theme to address. Then again, step near the toy aisles of any mass merchant, and there is an alarming degree of color coding that leaves no room for speculation over which row of froth is intended for girls, and which row of action is intended for boys. Ridiculous.Shouldn’t we have outgrown all of this a very long time ago? Why do areas of responsibility have to be drawn along gender stereotypes to such an extent that without any listing on my part, you imagine exactly which jobs are supposed to be pink and which jobs are supposed to be blue? Shouldn’t we be talking about individual strengths? About what we want to do, and what we want to learn?
So, I’m not going to talk about it at all, but I will do more than just rant that the discussion of labor division on board should be reframed, and gender/color coding needs to go the way of the dinosaurs.
It is inevitable that tasks in running a household, whether it floats on water or sits on soil, will be divided for efficiency and economy. Whoever can handle a given area of responsibility faster or better is probably going to be doing it 90% of the time: we play to our respective strengths, regardless of gender.
If we want to examine the division of labor on board, there are a few more important questions to consider.
Is it divided fairly in terms of effort required? If one crewmember feel they carry too much of any one burden, it could foster resentment.
What happens if one crew member is incapacitated? It’s clearly a problem if there are tasks that only that person knows how to do.
Do you appreciate the work your partner tends to do? Make sure you swap responsibilities around now and then, not only to make sure there is baseline capability on both sides, but to understand what’s involved for a task that one person tends to do. We might all make assumptions about what is hard (or not) from the outside.
Are there things you should both do together? Do you want to learn jobs that are your partner’s expertise? What are things that either of you can do, that you should make sure you trade off?
One of my cruising mentors is the awesome Nancy Erley, who I took training classes from back in 2005. She’s circumnavigated twice, as captain of her boat, with all women crew- if we need any reminder that "blue jobs" are an artificial distinction. One of many things I learned from Nancy is that if there is something on the boat that I cannot do based on my physical size or strength, the limitation is not mine. It is not necessary to default to the larger / stronger man on board to handle that job. The real problem is the boat needs to be modified so that I can accomplish the job.
To see what other Raft-Up bloggers have to say about this topic, check out the list on our Raft-Up blog at "Raft-Up: Pink and Blue Jobs"!
