— Cross-posted at Femme-O-Nomics
Home improvement stores are gendered spaces. I know next to nothing about home improvement. I come from an elite enough background that when something in our home needed improving, we didn’t (for the most part) do the work ourselves. We hired others (always men) to come in, assess the situation, make a recommendation, and do the work involved. This weekend, I thought I was faced with having to improve my own home, but thankfully, I found someone to do it for me at Lowe’s–someone who, as it turns out, was a woman.
My family and I got back from a morning outing only to realize that we neglected to bring our house keys. [We have so many keys at our new house that we keep them on separate sets, though we had a garage key made for our car keys as a result.] So, we pulled up to our garage, and realized that we had no way of entering our house. We left a window unlocked, but had to tear a screen to get into the house. So… short story long, we had to repair a screen—something we know absolutely nothing about. I brought the whole screen with me thinking I would just get a new one that size.
When we got to Lowe’s, a woman–Carla*–confronted us as we entered asking what we were looking for. Holding up the screen, I smiled (with a bit of embarrassment) and said, “Screens and keys.” She said, “I can take care of both of those for you.” She brought us over to the screen section. I didn’t even realize we were there. She asked what kind of screen we wanted. I considered trying to act knowledgeable, but said, “We want to make this,” gesturing to the broken screen, “look like new for as cheap as possible.”
“Have you ever done a screen?” she asked. I laughed—but not as hard as she laughed at me after I laughed. If it’s far beyond hammering something or turning a screw, I’m a bit out of my league. So, I asked, “Is there any way you could help me with this?” Excitedly, she said, “Yeah! I’ve changed tons of these. I just did my whole house last year.” I was struck in many ways because I don’t think I’ve ever been able to say this about a residence I’ve lived in. I’ve never “done” anything to my whole house.
Inequality by (Interior) Design 