ABSTRACT
The story is also useful because it highlights the point that women's knowhow about all things domestic generally goes unquestioned by men and women. The assumption that women know best is accepted for a number of reasons. Most important of these is the well-documented evidence that married women generally expend much more energy and time running the home than men (see, for example, Deem 1986; Green et al. 1990; Oakley 1974a, 1974b). Second, women are socialised into the expectation that they will take primary responsibility for the home and must, by implication, be trained into that role (Abbott and Wallace 1997; Sharpe 1995; Griffin 1985). Third, the idea that the home is the preserve over which they are likely to have most control is relentlessly reinforced by, for example, the media in
various forms including women's magazines, popular fiction, film, radio and television drama and comedy, through advertising, marketing and retail psychology (Faulkner and Arnold 1985; Falk and Campbell 1997; Corrigan 1997). Finally, the view that women know best is reinforced by women themselves: mothers and daughters, siblings, neighbours and friends all participate in the process of monitoring and supervising each other's performance as housekeepers. However subtle the process of socialising women into this role may or may not be, the end result is the same: women feel responsible for the organisation of the home and, as a consequence, come to believe that they know the best way that tasks should be done.
