Shelina Zahra Janmohamed discusses a survey from the National Office of Statistics which shows that in 2005 people in the UK spend 2 hours and 22 minutes per day on housework, which is down by 30 minutes from 2000.
So much for statistics. I’m pretty much a house-husband myself at the moment, slaving away for hour after hour and just begining to recognise that I am showing signs of non-proportionate reactions when a cup is left out in the wrong place or a cat-hair mysteriously appears on a cushion.
So when the breadwinner walks through the door at 6pm I am ready to say “You just don’t know what it’s like being stuck here all day with just the washing-up and Harry’s place regs for company do you? You and your “workmates” swanning around, I wish I’d listened to my mother – she warned me I’d spend my life scrubbing doorsteps and talking about Nasrallah!.”
Anyway, have a look at Shelina’s blog, she also has some interesting views on British muslim communities:
We need to build some guts into the community, and we need to stop being afraid of being labelled as the “wrong sort of people” within our communities for proposing change. Let’s discard the labels imposed upon us by the outside, be that moderate or extremist, liberal or conservative, progressive or reactive. How many of us have avoided raising issues in our local communities for fear of being stigmatised, of having our reputations sullied, for becoming outcast?
In my other incarnation as a gainfully employed career personage (honest guv) I meet young British muslims in all their diversity all the time. Many are challenging and interesting and nothing at all like the stereotypes which are often presented in the comments boxes (from which their perspective is conspicuous by it’s absence.)
Here is a young woman who is trying to start a dialogue and nobody (muslim or otherwise) seems to want to talk to her.
I find that astonishing.
Are we frightened to communicate outside of what we know?