Remember the furore US Glamour magazine caused when it published ’13 little things that can make a man fall in love with you’ recently? The list included outrageous suggestions of handing him a cold beer when he gets out the shower, making him a snack immediately after sex, opening the door for him in sexy underwear, massaging him and, basically, devoting your entire life to making him happy – because a relationship is all about him it seems. We were reminded of this feature when looking through the Good Housekeeping archives and came across this article entitled ‘How to help your husband get ahead’. As we celebrate Women’s Equality Day today (August 26), it’s good to remind ourselves how far we’ve come in the equality stakes. Read on...
In the art of wifemanship, how-to-help-your-husband-get-along is becoming increasingly important.
It’s true that it has always been throughout history. How would Disraeli have managed without his Mary Anne to connive and push him on? The course of English history might have been very different if Sarah Jennings, wife of the Duke of Marlborough, had not caught Queen Anne’s ear and pleaded for her man to be given a chance.
Nearer our times, it was a Scots girl, Elizabeth, who turned a shy, stuttering, awkward sailor into the most loved and respected king in British history - pictured above with their daughter, Princess Elizabeth on the terrace at 145 Piccadilly, London.
Today it’s more important than ever before, because it is the bosses who have suddenly become acutely wife-conscious. In this ‘attaboy’ competitive age, John Smith’s wife behind her kitchen sink has become a VIP. For she is the one human element who can finally make or break her man. In America she has already assumed enormous importance. For some time it has been recognised procedure in Big Business there to interview the wife, as well as the husband, when he applies for a top-line job.
Pick up any American magazine and you’ll recognise the familiar pattern… Ambitious young business executive has difficulty in getting along with his ulcerated employer. One day baby-doll wife invites boss home to supper and serves him bilberry pie ‘just like my mom used to make’. End of story. Hank gets his promotion and Betty Ann writes a testimonial for Aunt Sarah’s pie mix.
You may say that it can’t happen here. Britain is still a male-dominated country. But just as surely as the ten-shilling broiler chicken has staked a claim on the Sunday joint, the idea of wife-vetting is catching on.
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As one managing director of a large firm told me, ‘I don’t care what their wives look like. When the time comes and the money is there, a bit of beauty treatment and a good dressmaker can work a miracle. What I am interested in is their attitude to their husband’s job. Whether they take it seriously as a joint effort and not just the means of a monthly pay cheque. It’s the long-term policy that marks out the future executive and not a flash-in-the-pay coup’.
Moral: As long as your husband is on the job, whether he comes home for dinner at 6pm or 8pm shouldn’t matter to you. Overtime, business trips and entertaining on the hop business VIPs should all be accepted as an integral part of wifemanship. That is, if you want your husband’s promotion!
The maelstrom of public life always spotlights the exceptional cases. But on a lesser scale, the same problems apply behind the lace curtain in every suburban street. I doubt if any wife in Britain, apart from the Queen Mother, has accomplished more for her husband than Lady Churchill. Hers is the backroom method perfected to perfection. Through 51 years of marriage, she has done her job so well that the world is oblivious of the fact that she worked at it at all.
We may have come a long way but new research reveals that the gender pay gap is widening the older we get and the more senior positions we find ourselves in. Read more here.
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