Tidbits: On the tired topic of women

“I hesitated a long time before writing a book on women,” wrote philosopher Simone de Beauvoir at the opening of her famous feminist work, The Second Sex, “The subject is irritating, especially for women; and it is not new.”

Beauvoir felt this way in the 1940’s, and I feel very much the same writing about women today, (indeed, the subject has collected nearly eighty additional years of dust since Beauvoir’s lament). Discussion of the mental load, for example—the concept that women in heterosexual relationships take on the bulk of the household managerial tasks—feels, well, tired (see here, here, here, and here.) Sure, it’s still true, women still do take on an outsized amount of the planning and worrying and thinking ahead, and yes, that does take a toll on a woman’s health and happiness, as well as her career, but…it has been discussed, over and over, we know this, so what to do—write about it again?