Okay, sure, the “binders full of women” thing was easy to take a pot shot at, but I do think Mitt Romney was trying to make a point, however inelegantly he went about it. The point being made was that he looked outside of his immediate circle for women to include in his administration in Massachusetts (his circle being all male at the time). I find that admirable, if it is true. Jon Stewart has questioned the veracity of this claim, stating that women’s groups approached Romney with the binders. I am aware that Jon Stewart’s objectivity is, ahem, open to question.
What was more revealing to me were Romney’s comments about how the workplace needs to be structured to accommodate women. The gist was that expectations of women in the workforce have to be tempered by their responsibilities at home. This illustrates to me a lack of understanding about how the roles of men and women at home have changed between Mitt Romney’s generation and my own. This is a misunderstanding which I don’t think is limited either to Governor Romney or his political party. I truly believe it is a generational divide.
One more than one occasion, I have had supervisors make comments about my wife’s state of employment based on the assumption that she works only to provide supplemental income to our family. (For the record, our contributions to the family wealth are rapidly approaching equal, and my income has at times been the supplemental one.) I have also rarely been given the consideration for family responsibilities that many of my female colleagues have. At the same time, my generation of men have been raised by our mothers and confirmed by our mates to understand that simply bringing home a paycheck does not count as fulfilling our responsibility to our families. Many of us would not want to live like that in any case.
Even those families that choose a very traditional way of structuring their lives have to talk about it. There is no assumption that the guy’s going out to work and the woman is going to tend the house (and that statement assumes we’re talking one man and one woman.) I’m glad I get to cook, and Rodney Lytle taught me the joy of a well-scrubbed toilet. I like that I know how to do my laundry, and I’m grateful that my wife does that most of the time. The point, however, is that between Mitt Romney’s (and Joe Biden’s) generation and mine, there’s been a fundamental shift in the way men and women relate to each other in families. Men my age are still trying to figure this shift out, but I think we understand that it’s a little more complex than just letting women go home early.