16/03/2025
“There seemed to be many more men in the hall than women. “Do all the women come”, I ask. The guide shook her head. “Too busy”, she said.
And that seem to be true in so many religions. Buddha left his wife and young son to go and sit under a banyan tree. There he contemplated the world.
I expect Mrs Buddha didn’t have time.”
📖 From ‘Between the stops” by Sandi Toksvig.
📷 Pictured: A dozing cat, in a Banyan tree, Botanical gardens, Mauritius. I’m assuming he’s male.
I remember reading an article about how a) 99.6% of the world’s inventions are by men (I can’t find the article or actual number but this seems like an informed estimate) and b) how very few of them would have been possible hadn’t there been a Mrs Inventor in the background making sure Mr Inventor was clothed, fed, beer’d and kept away from noisy children so that his clever mind could be used towards bettering humanity.
Most men I know nowadays have at least three hobbies. Very few of my women friends do - unless you count self-help books, watching tidying videos online, comparing hoover reviews and scrolling Instagram for fun things to do with kids on the weekend “hobbies”. It’s not like we don’t want to - trust me, the amount of women (especially mums) who have said to me they don’t even know what they enjoy anymore, are MANY. And they WOULD like a hobby, they just don’t know where to start, and where their identity of “Mrs” or “Mum” ends and that of their actual name begins.
I’d like us to get some more time back, please. We have too much on our plates to figure this one out ourselves unfortunately, so we need support. There are twelve school WhatsApp groups with messages we have to answer first. The dads muted them because it was “too much”.
I think we all would like to see what a world with more Mrs Inventors would be like. The men in charge currently aren’t the most impressive, I think we agree on that. And that’s unfair, because they give men a bad rap. I love men! But there’s a reason we tell our kids to find a mum if they get lost during a school trip and need help, and that says a lot.
So a happy belated International Women’s Day to us all. We shouldn’t need a day.
