Having read a fair few sagas from medieval Iceland and Norway, among other historical texts, it occurs to me that the role of wife used to have a lot more respect to it, because the home itself was recognizeable as a much more important economic unit. It wasn't just a place where a man and woman lived with their 2.1 children and a dog and a cat (and the kids' goldfish), but rather, a place where many others toiled to eek out sustenance from the ground, the livestock, the hearth, and the furnace. Being assigned to managing domestic duties wasn't a demotion to women of this era. At least in Scandinavia -- things do seem slightly more skewed in other regions, though none seem quite as bleak as the early-mid 20th century. Strangely enough, it almost seems that a major driver of inequality can be realized in the abolition of slavery -- though perhaps it's better to remember that this arrangement also came to an end with the advent of industrialization. The home went from being a powerhouse of the economy to little more than a dormitory, and the family unit little more than an old time hobby men had when they weren't busy out drinking, or carrying on with their corporate office life. And for a time, women were largely resigned to simply do as they said, because their power had been taken by the machines, and there had been no place made for them, en masse anyway, in this new world. We've of course had a pushback to that particularly problematic situation as women asserted that they would not simply obey and be servile -- though I do always wonder how much of this was truly liberation, and how much of it was the fiat world forcing women into the workplace as families could no longer subsist on a single income, and we may as well frame it as liberatory rather than the impoverishment it in many cases was. And of course, all the while, as women took on the same roles men already had, often at a disadvantage, they were still expected to carry out the domestic duties of homemaking and child rearing, which, even in the more standalone smaller home environment, are not trivial tasks -- particularly as the various other personnel that went along with the larger homes of old are long gone, and public schooling, the television, and the iPad are sorry replacements that often bring at least as much hindrance as they bring help.

I feel somewhat compelled to tidily draw conclusions about solutions for this situation, but at the same time, it feels like it'd be forced (not to mention, likely a bit patronizing). There is perhaps value in illuminating the situation, at least as I see it, so as to at least provide some recognition of the problem. If nothing else, though, it does seem like prosperity, and the means to make decisions about how to address the situation and carry out those plans, would be helpful, even if we certainly can't just throw sound money at the situation and consider it solved.