Narrowboat Life: Discover Life Afloat on the Inland Waterways by Batty Jim

Author:Batty, Jim [Batty, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472927095
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-05-18T16:00:00+00:00

Two women with windlasses walk to the next lock as their partners navigate their narrowboats alongside, Braunston Flight, Grand Union Canal .

SOCIAL conditioning?

M y partner Karen says that women do all the lock work for the same reason that they may be the ones to clean the floors and toilets while men take out the rubbish and mend leaky taps: out of social conditioning and habit. The fact that so many women work the locks, do the shopping, cook the meals and clean the inside of the boat, while the majority of men drive the boat, service its engine, repair the internal ‘life-support’ systems and keep its exterior rust-free (or not) suggests we are socially conditioned to some extent. We’re raised that way or it’s what’s expected, so they are easy habits to fall into. At a recent liveaboard boater’s party I heard this segregation of tasks referred to as ‘pink work’ and ‘blue work’.

There’s no right or wrong way to allocate tasks, and of course in many cases these generalised observations don’t, ahem, hold water, but perhaps the conditioned division of labour becomes more polarised when living on a boat simply because more labour is required. Narrowboats are more complex than most flats or houses, so there are more things to know about, attend to and occasionally fix.

You can do both ‘domestic’ and ‘boaty’ chores solo, and there are hundreds of single-handers out there, both women and men, who will attest to this. But you need to be very dedicated to the lifestyle and expect to put much more time into it than if you were living on land. Two people sharing this variety of tasks, however divvied up, undoubtedly makes boating life much easier.

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