After hearing former President Trump speak of black jobs and Hispanic jobs, I began to ponder—what exactly is a woman’s job?

WOMAN’S job DEFINED

Women’s work, according to Wikipedia is a field of labour (sic) assumed to be solely the realm of women and associated with specific stereotypical jobs considered as uniquely feminine or domestic duties throughout history. It is most commonly used in reference to the unpaid labor typically performed by that of a mother or wife to upkeep the home and children.^[1]

Interestingly enough, the work I currently do is not traditionally deemed as women’s work. My childcare days are long gone, and I do not tend to other children, I have finally hired someone to help me clean, and I do a minimal amount of cooking. Now, I bet you are wondering what I do all day.

THIS WOMAN’S job

I do plenty. My jobs consist of shredding the pasture with a tractor, weed eating, watering the plants, maintaining and upgrading computer equipment, and doing household repairs. Oh, and I am responsible for home pest control, including killing scorpions and mice as well as removing snakes.

Sometimes a job is not as easy as it seems. The toilet seat in my office needed replacing. After giving me twenty years of service, the plastic spacers between the seat and the toilet bowl had begun to disintegrate. No problem. Right? WRONG!

I dutifully ordered a beautiful seat from Amazon that I mistakenly sent to my daughter’s house in Houston. Fortunately, it arrived the same day I did.

No harm. No foul.

Easy-peasy, right? Just unscrew the two wing nuts holding the seat to the bowl, remove, and replace, screwing the new ones in.

Unfortunately, the bathroom is miniature. I could not get under the toilet to look up and became befuddled when reaching under the toilet. Was I going lefty loosey or righty tighty?

That problem solved, I moved on to the next roadblock. Some man had installed the original toilet seat, and the plastic wingnuts were screwed so tightly they would not budge.

Sigh. The next phase of my endeavor sent me searching for a tool that was small enough to grasp the wingnut. The pile of implements began to rise as I sought the best one for the job.

Admittedly, even with a tool, I spent several days in fits and starts, attempting to remove the plastic wing nuts. I did eventually get one off but finally had to admit defeat as the bolt on the remaining one had rusted, blocking it from coming off, even after spraying it with WD- 40.

WOMAN’S job BECOMES MORE DIFFICULT

Now, I was really in a stew. Could I cut the plastic wingnut off with a box cutter? Nope.

By this time, I had managed to take the lid off, but the bolt was still holding the seat prisoner.

OK, what about cutting the bolt? Eureka. I wandered out to the workshop and grabbed the Dremel. Folks do not try this at home. Even after buying a circular bit that would reportedly cut through metal, the disk crumbled, perhaps because I could not see what I was doing and was unable to ensure that the blade was at a 90-degree angle to the bolt.

By this time, I was two weeks into the project, had made several trips to the hardware store, and spent a good hour looking for the angle grinder I thought we owned. Eventually, I surrendered and asked my neighbor if I could borrow his.

Mercifully, he came and used it to free the bolt. The replacement seat went on flawlessly.