为何女性的“隐性”工作应当被承认

The recent suggestion that breastfeeding should be allowed in the chambers of Parliament has been denounced by MP Simon Burns, who thinks it will open the Commons to ridicule. I wonder what the headmistress who recently enraged the likes of me by asserting that her girls could hope for a serious career or children, but not both, would think of that.

近期一个允许国会议庭内母乳喂奶的提议被下院议员Simon Burns谴责，他认为这会使平民百姓耻笑。我很好奇那位女校长会怎样想，她最近因声称女孩只能在正经的工作和孩子之间选择一个而激起众怒。

The possibility of combining children with outside work has, of course, always been accepted when it came to menial work – the women down the mines used to complain that the belts hurt them “when they were in the family way” – but not for well-educated middle-class lasses. But even in the days when such women “didn’t work” they actually did a vast amount. For example, as I’ve said before, the young women sent out to marry Englishmen ruling India had to control all the staff and cater for the whole outfit – the kind of stuff which would have counted as a serious job if a man had been doing it.

当然了，涉及到粗活累活，大家都能接受将孩子和工作结合起来——矿井下的女性曾抱怨怀孕的时候传送带勒得他们疼——但对受过高等教育的中产阶级女性却不是这样。但即使是在这些女性“没有工作”的时候，他们也实际上做了大量的工作。比如，像我之前说的，那些嫁给统领印度的英国人的年轻女性要管理全体人员并提供全部装备——这些活如果让男人来做就会被视为正经的工作。

My mother had no salaried job, but when my father was a housemaster at a public school she was responsible for the catering and staff, and my father had only become the housemaster because the wife of the one before him had fallen ill, so the man couldn’t continue.

我的母亲做着没有工资的工作，但是当我父亲曾任公立学校舍监的时候，她负责饮食和参谋，并且我父亲成为舍监也是因为他之前的那任舍监由于妻子生病而无法继续。

There was a time, too, when a doctor’s wife was an essential part of his practice; she’d know a good deal about the patients and maybe how they got their illnesses. It is only now that so many of us get the credit for our work – whether we’ve got children or not.

曾经还有一段时间，医生的妻子是他业务中重要的部分，她会了解很多病人的情况，或许知道他们是如何生病的。只有现在我们很多人才能因为自己的工作而且受到奖赏，不论我们有没有孩子。

译文属原创，未经允许，不得转载。