In a country town, ANN MATHESON finds that little changes — especially the things that should change.
After a lifetime of city newsrooms, vying for premium parking spaces, fighting deadlines and jostling for service, I was sure that if I moved to the country, life had to be better. I was wrong.
Certainly the car spaces were abundant, the pace more leisurely and the air much cleaner, but it took only a short while to discover I'd dropped out of the fast lane into a Happy Days time warp.
Less than an hour on the freeway from a capital city, I found myself living in a place where women who expressed opinions on world events were smart arses, and if they were so vulgar as to say they supported land rights they were branded "uninformed do-gooders or probably had an ancestor born on the wrong side of a boong blanket".
It was a place where the women's movement seemed never to have been heard of by the men, and was rarely spoken of by the women.
Equality of the sexes was never spoken of at all in mixed company, unless someone was "feelin' pretty shitty with their old man over something and wanted him to look small in front of his mates", a man told me.
All feminist issues were taboo if you wanted to keep in "with the right circles", but I kept forgetting myself and raised a number of them a number of times, mainly because they were more interesting than the local weather, whose team was beaten last Saturday, how unfair which umpire was and how many bottles of port had been consumed by whoever had the last dinner party. My city brashness was not appreciated at the dinner tables of those who invited my husband to bring me along for a feed, or those who briefly sat at my table as guests.
And because of my many lapses I have been asked, in
the typically blunt country way of doing things, mainly by men:
- why was I married when I hated men so much?
- was I a dyke?
- did I have balls?
- how could I say there was any domestic violence in the town?
- why rattle on about things that won't ever change?
- didn't I realise my outspokenness would work against me in the bush?
- why did I ever leave the city since I didn't want to fit in?
- didn't I understand that blacks were inferior in every way?
- why on earth didn't I support the death penalty?
- how could anyone with my background vote against the Liberals?
- why didn't I talk about nice things like everyone else?
- who gives a shit what women want when the man has to slog his guts out to pay for it anyway?
I realised that, in going bush, I'd crossed some invisible border and was expected to be a Marion Cunningham clone. My role was to stand by my man, to support him in his work, home and play and to hell with my own opinions and beliefs.
If I could just make "the small adjustments", I could become a good country wife, my female companions told me. I said it was subjugation for the sake of subjugation and they agreed, but never in
front of anyone else. If I'd been inclined to make those small adjustments it would have brought praise — not to me but to my husband for having chosen such a pliable, obedient and dutiful partner.
Like the other "good" wives, I would be expected to cook, sew and craft for fetes and street stalls to raise money for schools, the hospital, kindergarten, children's athletics and men's clubs and male-dominated organisations.
Mostly the men would spend the money on what they thought was important, while happily telling the Marions Cunningham they weren't the decision makers. I'd have an open door policy to an always spotless, well-lardered home where mates could drop in anytime for a few beers and "a bite" and a game of pool, without any help or invitation to join in.
I would expect to be taken out once or twice a year to the men's clubs which held annual dinners, or special mixed functions, to shut up the members' wives when they complained about how they always stayed home while their husbands were always out.
I'd help clean the brass at the church, and provide and arrange flowers on a roster while the men did "church business" on the committees.
I would wash, iron and hang up my husband's clothes so he could sparkle at work, club meetings, playing sport or just having a drink with his mates at the bar where I'd be discouraged because it was men's turf, one of the few places left where they could "be themselves".
I would join the Lions, Rotary Chamber of This and That Ladies Committee to support and glorify my husband's standing in the organisation. My job? Raise money for the men but not to expect too much thanks, or even a mention, when the club gets publicity as it passes a cheque over to some cause on the front page of the local paper, or pats itself on the back for having so much in the bank at the end of the year.
I soon came to understand that in the bush there is one overriding rule. Men rule the roost and women are expected to comply on every level.
They are expected to put their husband's job above their own. The woman may be in a profession with years of tertiary training and experience, her husband may hold a clerical position, but the woman will always be judged on her husband's role.
She is always "Jim Smith's missus. You know, he works in the men's wear shop, she puddles around a bit at the hospital, a physio or something else like that."
People are categorised by what they do. When we first arrived I was astonished at how introductions were made.
"Meet Fred, he's a bigwig with the government. Meet Len, he owns a heavy machinery business and Shirl's his wife, aren't you love? And Jim here has got a big cabinet making business in town, his missus is a good girl too."
And the children! There are lots of little girls in the town who wash their brothers' dishes, iron their brothers' clothes and cook some of their meals. They make their brothers' beds and vacuum the floors their brothers walk on, but very few of those brothers do the same for their sisters. It's not a man's job to interfere with women's work.
Just as it isn't a boy's job to aspire to become a nurse or teacher. Those are the kinds of professions the girls are encouraged to go for. Many parents still take the attitude that the boys should be encouraged to go on to university to get a "proper career" because they'll have families to support, while girls get married and just raise the kids.
If they perceive the ability to do well academically in their daughters they try to steer them into the softer professions, teaching being the favourite because they will be able to work school hours with holidays off to be with the kids.
While the country may offer cleaner air, a relaxing pace and recognition of neighbours in the street, I have decided it's not for me. My house is on the market. I want to live where it's easier to be a woman, to have opinions and avoid subordination on the
grounds of gender.