Helen Keating, Emily Bird and Carole Ludlow Mooney on women doing the domestic work and men not noticing. Plus Mark Lewinski-Grende speaks up for his tribe
There was I thinking that what was mentioned in your article on cleaning (Philosophers tackle ancient mystery of why women clean and men don’t notice, 22 December) was a northern trait where, 60 years ago, men regarded wives as “her indoors”, who worked at home (keeping the soap dispensers filled up surreptitiously, no doubt). She wasn’t expected to have a career, often didn’t even know what her husband earned, and a man’s wedding ring was regarded as a shackle, since that’s what a wife was given on her marriage.
Helen Keating
Gatehouse of Fleet, Dumfries and Galloway
• I was surprised to discover that researchers recently identified a condition they have labelled “gendered affordance perception”. Could this be the very same condition that I and all the women I know have been fully aware of for our entire adult lives, known to us as “domestic blindness”?
Emily Bird
North Perth, Western Australia
