Hot dinners for our men?
Awise woman once said to me, the upside of having guests is that it makes you tidy up your house. I thought of this as I Road Runner-ed round the 80-square-metre, one-bedroom flat dusting, vacuuming, washing floors, and shoving stuff into cupboards and wardrobes. If someone happened to open a cupboard it would all come tumbling out, like something out of aMarx Brothers film.
I’ve been living in tiny spaces for over 20 years, the last house being 60 square metres, so I’ve guess I’ve come up in the world. Iwas a tiny-space champion before it became fashionable because that’s what I could afford and what’s the point of having all those uninhabited rooms to clutter up?
In the last house I had a spare upstairs in the garden I used as an Airbnb and let out at budget rates to keep the wolf from the door. Back then everyone was trying to grab some of the tourism dollar. Now there’ll be amultitude of wolves lurking in doorways, and people who thought their flatting days were well and truly behind them will be taking in lodgers, rather than Airbnb-ers, to make ends meet.
Women have been hit hardest by unemployment, with rates rising higher and faster than men. Statistics NZ numbers reveal that 10 out of 11 workers who’ve lost their jobs due to Covid-19 are women. Welcome to the new precariat, sister, here we are again, down among the women at the bottom.
No political party is addressing the problem. What are we to do with ourselves without paid work in hard times? Revert to putting hot dinners on the table for shovel ready men? Or will we drift districts with swags on our backs, trudging door to door asking if there’s any work for a handy woman itinerant?
As we discovered in lockdownwhen a babyboom was predicted, instead of getting pregnant, people were getting divorced. Barefoot and pregnant isn’t an option unless a government introduces a policy to pay for breeding to replenish stock to support a top-heavy ageing population.
Let go from jobs such as retail, tourism, office work, hospitality and part-time and casual work, in a tightened labour market some women may never see a pay cheque again. We don’t know how we’ll earn a crust but chances are many of us will have amedley of what is referred to now as ‘‘side hustle’’ jobs rather than obtain money from one source.
Some of us will be getting paid the living wage, others will think themselves lucky to be earning the minimum wage.
It may be too late to form a political party to stand in this election, but out-of-work women need a power bloc, a party of ‘‘women wanting work’’, to draw attention to our vulnerable status.
We cannot let a generation ofwomen go and make amockery of the girls/women-can-doanything mantra that once inspired the female masses.
Now that the world has learnt how vulnerable globalisation has made us, maybe it’s up to women to girl-power up the country with cottage industries run by community groups. Women could lead the rebirth in creating a small manufacturing base so that New Zealand has selfdetermination and self-reliance.
In the meantime, those who indulged in McMansion mania and built five-bedroom, threebathroom housesmight have to turn their own private Idahos in to mini boarding houses to not only earn a penny, but to put a roof over heads. Me, I’m looking at the lounge and thinking, er… bunks.