Gender and Gardening - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 146

Lisa T : You two, yourselves, you'd undertake to design it yourselves and build it
yourselves?
Phoebe : Oh yeah, yeah (laughs) …and we know enough people to give us a hand.
Anne : I know I can do it …it's only that you're brought up to think “well you can play
with the doll and the chaps can play with the Lego” or the…
Both university educated, Anne and Phoebe bring their encounter with the feminist
idea that gender is socially acquired to bear on their sense of what they can achieve
in their garden. As a result of building room sets at Ikea, Anne had developed a
measure of assured competence, as the following exchange indicates, with tools and
technology:
Anne : To be perfectly honest Ikea's quite good for that, because, you know, like today I
had to climb up to the third layer at work to lift out some boxes, you know, so we get used
to doing things, you know, and I build all the wardrobes.
Phoebe : You've got used to using power tools and since you've started work on the house,
you see, as an extension of that…
Anne : You're starting to put floor boards down in the…
Phoebe : Yeah, I've learned how to use an electric jigsaw (laughs).
Anne : Oh yes and I cut out the bit in the kitchen.
Phoebe : Shelves up and…
Other feminist researchers have found that even women who use technology in the
workplace tend to relinquish technological questions and tasks to the men they live
with (Cockburn 1985; Gray 1992). In these contexts there are no men to whom those
tasks need be surrendered - the women simply get on with finding the confidence
and skills to execute DIY in the home and they extend those skills to the garden.
And these women thought nothing of taking on heavy digging - they had plans to
dig up the lawn and replace it with decorative bricks, and 'at the same time,' Anne
added, 'I can start digging foundations for this business, 'cos it will need er, proper
foundations.'
In other instances even much older women took on a wide range of maintenance
tasks. With Maud and her daughter Rosemary, labour had to be divided according
to age:
Lisa T : And who gardens? Is it both of you?
Rosemary : We don't have any help.
Maud : Rosemary cuts the lawns and looks after the roses. I do the herbaceous borders.
My hobby is growing sweet peas, chrysanthemums and runner beans. Rosemary looks
after the raspberries.