‘Husbands still don’t see it as their responsibility to get the groceries’: How feminism has failed

Feminism is a movement that was meant to get equal rights for women with men, but has it worked? Nikki Osbourne takes a look.

Comedian Nikki Osbourne. Photo Mark Cranitch.

Feminism is a movement that was meant to get equal rights for women with men.

It wasn’t that long ago that women couldn’t take out a mortgage without a male guarantor or own their own credit card. In fact, women couldn’t punish their own plastic until 1974. We can thank the bra burning for that one.

Mind you, we still seem to take our husband’s surname and the idea of the reverse is still an outrageous thought. However, one could argue that if we keep adopting double-barrel names we’ll end up with a society of names like Sarah Michelle Gellar Prinze Junior.

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Another big win is our female sports teams are starting to get paid to compete! Even when I was a kid I never pursued sport because it was never a financially viable path for me.

So in general, we’ve come a long way.

We’ve managed to get the same rights as our husbands, however, have our husbands got the memo about the slack that needs to be picked up on the home front?

Like if we are working hard all week, are they going to fold that basket of laundry? Do they see that as their jurisdiction?

Are they going to organise playgroup? Clean the toilets?

From what I’ve observed from my friends is that the answer is no.

There’s still a generational crossover where women are expected to run the house on top of their job. Where, even though their wives are earning more and working longer hours, the husbands still don’t see it as their responsibility to get the groceries and whip up a pasta for their families.

There’s a very viral sketch on the internet created by Troy Kinne, where he calls his wife in to show her the magic washing basket, where he says he had dirty clothes in it yesterday then today, it’s empty and all the dirty clothes are clean and in his drawers. It’s gone viral for a reason. It’s true.

Nikki Osborne

But it’s not all one-way traffic. I know I still expect my husband to mow the lawns, take out the bins and screw shit. So the patriarchal programming is still clearly strong on both sides.

Feminism is amazing until you have kids. Then I keep seeing the wheels fall off.

Gone are the days of everyone knowing exactly what their roles are. It used to be so simple. Instead, now, it’s a collision of expectations and confusion. Our roles are blurred.

The redistribution of gender roles is causing chaos. We are navigating new territory and old habits are dying hard. And our women are exhausted and our men are lost.

You can try to tell me otherwise but I honestly believe that men still inherently feel that they should be the breadwinners for their family and women inherently feel, due to overwhelming biological factors, the need to stay at home with their babies.

However society hasn’t adapted to this new equal way of living yet and it’s really hard for both sides.

Just as gen X and Y got caught up in the tech crossover, I think we are currently in the tricky bit of equality.

We all know what equality should look like in the workplace but do we know what it is in our homes? Do you have equality at home?