Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip from Chequerboard Revisited shows scenes in black and white from a 1974 Chequerboard program that includes an interview with husband Kevin at the dinner table and wife Margaret ironing, juxtaposed with a colour interview with Kevin in 2000 reflecting back on that period of time. Their children respond to the interviewer’s question about their preference for mum or dad’s cooking. Kevin talks about his feelings concerning his wife working and Margaret reflects on how work has changed her and how their lives would be different if she didn’t work.

Educational value points

• The clip provides a glimpse of the narrowly defined gender roles that had prevailed in Australia before the ‘sexual revolution’ challenged them. As the family’s primary breadwinner in 1972 Kevin wishes he had a non-working stay-at-home wife who would ‘look after’ and ‘wait on’ him. In 2000 the ideas of the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s have not changed Kevin who is clearly still attached to the notion of traditional gender roles.

• The strength of the original Chequerboard documentaries comes from their focus on personal stories to reveal the bigger social issues of the day, in this case married women entering the workforce. During the 1960s the percentage of women in the workforce rose above 40 per cent. Married women entering the workforce changed family dynamics and required a redefinition of roles. Kevin and Margaret are shown trying to negotiate those changes.

• As conveyed by the clip, attitudes and values are learned through the family, largely from parents. Kevin, interviewed in 2000, makes it clear that he learnt about roles within marriage from his father and seeing his parents’ relationship. The model of the married relationship that he learnt while growing up, that of the husband exerting authority over a subservient wife, was the one that he wanted in his own marriage.

• In the clip Margaret expresses a key idea of the women’s liberation movement, that women need to have economic autonomy for their own wellbeing and for healthy relationships within marriage. Interviewed in 1974, Margaret was speaking at a time when these ideas were being discussed in Australia following the publication of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch in 1970.

• Many men opposed ideas arising from the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s in Australia. These ideas supported women’s independence and autonomy and, as revealed in the clip, Margaret recognises that Kevin does not like the ‘new’ more assertive person she has become. In 2000 when Kevin is recollecting this time in their lives, he asserts that paid employment gave her new ideas that meant she 'had her say’ and challenged his authority.

In black-and-white footage from 1974, Kevin is sitting around the table eating dinner with his two sons and daughter.
Interviewer Do you like Dad’s cooking?
Boy Yeah.
Interviewer Whose do you prefer, Mum’s cooking or Dad’s cooking?
Boy Both.
Interviewer That’s very diplomatic of you, isn’t it?
Girl Both. They’re nearly both the same.
Interviewer Do you enjoy cooking, Kevin?
Kevin Oh, I don’t mind it. It’s … I prefer being looked after, you know, waited upon.
Interviewer You’d rather Margaret did it?
Kevin Oh, yeah. Come home, put the feet under the table. It’s all waiting for you. But I’ve got to bend backwards a little bit, because with her working, well it sort of cuts both ways, you know.

Kevin is being interviewed in 2000, reflecting on the footage we’ve just seen.
Kevin I learnt from me own Dad, and of course when Dad spoke, Mum jumped. And of course I think when I got married and I would tell Marg, you know, this, that and that. She was good. Until she went to work. But of course once she went to work, you know, all the other older women, they used to talk to her and, you know, probably show her the other finer points in life, and then I think she started to buck a bit.

In footage from 1974, Margaret is being interviewed while ironing.
Interviewer What’s Kevin think of you working?
Margaret Well, really, he doesn’t like it. Because, um, he reckons I’m not the girl that I used to be.
Interviewer What’s that mean?
Margaret Probably soft and gentle and silly. And never stick up for yourself. Whereas now I’ll have my say, whether he likes it or not.
Interviewer What would life be like for you if you had to live on the one wage?
Margaret Ah … you, um – you have a very bad feeling towards one another, because Kevin will go out and he’ll go and have a drink, and yet I can’t have any money to go and do this or go and buy that.