Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The perfect excuse

Perhaps one of the daftest headlines I've seen for sometime is this one from The Telegraph.

Men owe women for 'creating beer' claims academic

You may not be surprised to find that the "academic" in question is a woman. Her claim is based on the evidence that for hundreds of years it is was the job of women to brew beer.

Fair enough, I'm not disputing that claim, but that doesn't prove it was a woman who "created" beer any more than it proves that it was a woman who created bread. It just proves that for hundreds of years it was left to women to do the job of making beer.

And for hundreds of years it was left to women to do the job of laundry, child rearing, sewing, cooking, cleaning and looking after the home.

So if men have women to thank for beer - then, by the logic of this academic, women only have themselves to blame for creating housework. So excuse me while I pop to the local for a swift half and a game of darts while the missus gets on with the ironing.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...

You're welcome! ;)

And thanks for inventing champagne, whisky, brandy, gin, etc. Not Campari though, that's foul...

bernard said...

Offhand, I cannot think of a woman who has 'invented' anything.
'Discovered', sure; Madam Curie springs to mind.
Perhaps this female academic has just come across the saying: "necessity is the mother of invention" and has taken it too literally.
Poor soul.