Women's Work - DIY In The House
By Kim Hunter
Many women are feeling empowered these days to do home improvement projects on their own. Going beyond interior painting, women are learning how to use tools to do anything from repairs to renovations, the traditional territory of men. This trend naturally follows the trend of women buying homes by themselves. After-all, if you're responsible for it, you've got to have the skills to make things happen. Home renovation has been a man's domain only because of traditional gender roles, but many of these roles are now becoming obsolete, at least in some contexts. All home improvement skills can be learned, and practiced, by anyone willing to try, and within the last five years, the number of women wanting to try has been going up, up, up.
Helping women build those skills are teachers offering courses just for women. Check out your local parks and recreation web site or flyer and I'll bet there'll be at least one class offering to teach women about power tools or home repair. It's the same in the big-box hardware stores. While not all of these classes are women-only, the all-female environment can be a safer zone for women to learn in. With men around, they might be more self conscious. Learning with other women, they may feel more free to ask questions and take risks. But whether co-ed or all-women, tool-use and home repair courses are attracting women in record numbers.
Doing home improvement projects oneself has many benefits. First of all, it saves money. Contractor's can have extremely high hourly rates. For the price of two hours of their time, a person can take a course to learn how to do the job themselves. There's also the element of having complete creative control. Once you have a skill, you can use it to do anything your mind can imagine. Doing it yourself eliminates the possibility of a grumpy and lazy contractor telling you it should be done another way. The outcome might be far more creative than if you'd had to go through the potentially embarrassing process of telling someone else your idea.
Aesthetic focuses such as tiling, painting and gardening are still of highest interest to women, but it certainly doesn't end there. Women's interest in home improvement is changing the face of hardware stores. Employees now recognize that women are serious about working on their homes, and take them seriously when they ask questions. Designers are jumping on the bandwagon, putting out lines of tools directed specifically to women. Whether or not these tools are ergonomically better for women to use is debatable, but they might sell well, and help women feel like they have a share of the home improvement industry.
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