(Wo)men’s work

Alexandra Howe, London

I moved to France in 2012 with my husband Andrew to work in our Paris banking team. Andrew gave up his job in London and reinvented himself as a house-husband and writer.

Some people find this strange. They ask what he does with his time now that he is not ‘working’. I wonder whether, if the situation were reversed, I would be questioned in the same way. I think that I wouldn’t. I think people would not find it at all strange that, as a woman, I would choose to do ‘women’s work’.

The first time I completed our family tax return in France, I put myself as ‘Déclarant 1’ and Andrew as ‘Déclarant 2’. Afterwards, a French accountant told me that this was not the right way to do it, the man should always come first. And when the tax calculation came through, I found that they had corrected my ‘mistake’. Their letter was addressed to M. Andrew Doe, with a demand for payment from him of tax on the income that I had earned. Moreover, being unable to reconcile the fact that we are married with the fact that I have a different (maiden) name from my husband, they helpfully renamed me Mrs Doe.

In a sense, this really doesn’t matter, and in a sense it really does. It’s just a small example of one of the casual, everyday ways in which I am reminded – despite the fact I am ostensibly living in an enlightened, free society – that, being a woman, I am expected to play a certain role and my husband, being a man, is expected to play another. 

No one has ever stopped us from living the way we want to live our lives, but we have to explain, and justify, why we are casting ourselves against our types. And I can’t help feeling that no-one, of whatever gender or sexuality or race or colour or belief, should have to do that.