Gender Vs Sex
Allow me to contribute by asking a question. Have we notice at least in Zambia that house maids are normally women and garden boys are men. In the colonial days that is pre-1964 and even a few years after Independence, men used to work as 'house maids'. What could have caused the shift?
GabKon What a great question. To answer you, I think the fact that women are now maids is a step in the right direction on its own. Then we had men as house boys because women could not be employed in Zambia and they were not even allowed to travel, for instance go to the Copperbelt or major towns. So they stayed in the villages, farming and keeping their children. that is why men were employed as both garden boys and house boys...
SO now, after Independence and travel restrictions on women were lifted, women needed to find work. At that point, they could either pick on gardening or house keeping, and due to gender norms, the house jobs were left to the women and men took up exterior jobs like gardening until this day. But we know that the best professional renowned cooks are male, so there is no excuse for men refusing to cook in the home.
Do I make sense?
Well, so many things could have caused this change. May be the jobs of house maids were lass masculine as compared to a garden boy so it could have been perceived that men could in addition do less masculine jobs such as "house maids". It may also suggest that this was borrowed from the western culture. It may also be that, the employers fell more comfortable working with men as they could double as both house maids and garden boys at certain times. That is my little contribution.--Kafuiaheto 21:27, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
