It's all over, Honey.

I’ve read an article in The Guardian. So, women do all the housework and marriage is dead. The Royal Economic Study Society, as soon as women and men marry, the woman spends 15 hours a week on house chores. And yes, most interviewees were working. The men, in contrast, spend 5 hours a week on domestic tasks. (I know – five sounds a lot to me too, but there we are). As result of these chore wars (or let us used the dignified term of a french author, Hélène Couprie, “intra-family inequality), women benefit less from marriage than men. The article proceeded to explain that in 2005, the number of people deciding to get married in the UK, was the lowest since the first record of 1862. Is it too extreme to think about the death of marriage? Writer Joan Didion once said that “marriage is the classic betrayal”, then she must be happy, fewer and fewer people are choosing the public Judas kiss of a wedding. Personally, I don’t think marriage is out just because women do all the housework or the classic Feminine Mystique seemingly turns into a classic Feminine Mistake. Men are put off too. They cheat within weeks of their engagement or wedding. The sacredness of marriage got lost in modern society. There’s a very relevant website: www.nomarriage.com. The writer is furious, angry man. Housekeeping Monthly of May 1955 gave advice to women:“Speak in a low soothing voice, have dinner ready and never complain. A good housewife knows her place”. And men were praised for doing two simple things: 1) going to work and 2) coming back home. Now we have the angry man of nomarriage.com stating the following** Brace yourself** : “ today marriage is a contract where a man is still supposed to provide for his family, but the woman is a nagging bitch who stops having sex and ass-rapes in divorce court”.I can’t help but wonder: Are we witnessing a new kind of gender war? Of course, we’ll still have stupid women writing books saying how nice it is to be a stay-at-home mum and behave like Martha Stewart. But a growing number of women are now assuming senior roles, but that this revolution hasn’t been matched with one at home. WHich brings us back to the death of marriage.

I decided to look around, I was in Paris so all I saw was French Women. I love French Women, I’m not being chauvinistic I love the French. We had Edith Cresson and Simone Veil and well, I hate Ségolène Royal , but way too go, girl! French women have power because they have control. In Paris, you always get too see these perfect mums, children marching obediently to school under the weight of their maths books in their Tintin satchels. No wonder, that as adults, French men need to recreate that secure feeling of being directive by an authoritative mother superior. All this, explains the dizzy rise of Miss Royal. Not only is she a competent mère de famille nombreuse , she even looks like a respectable pharmacienne with her white campaign wardrobe. Overall, France is a country in which childcare is state-funded and women don’t necessarily have to choose between working and parenting. And the country has produced a well-preserved, warm and goodlooking female politician and she may be poised to become the first female French leader since…Er…Joan of Arc. Again, I hate Segolène, but the feminist in me finds it just surprising that it has taken so long. She learned how to scream “non”, slap everyone within range and be in. That lengthy digression leads me back to my original point: Ségolène refused to marry François.