Can you believe how threatened the Labor Party must feel when it has to attack the Opposition Leader for referring to housewives doing ironing? Apparently he should have said housepersons or “directors of irons” or perhaps ironists or some other stupid name so as not to offend liberated women. Has it come to this? Why do we have to be so hypersensitive about our status? Is it because we don’t really believe we have arrived in spite of the “I am woman, hear me roar” cry?

We women struggled for so long for our rights. And yet we have become so ashamed of any reference to womanhood or female occupations that we jump down the throat of anyone who refers to tasks that women have done for years. Whether we like it or not we women are the ones who usually stay at home with the children. We don’t have to if we don’t want to, but it is still a matter of personal choice.

We certainly have the equipment for pregnancy and breast feeding, but I wonder how long it will be until some feminist or Labor politician becomes offended by the term “pregnant woman”. It seems as if anything to do with females is an insult to the female gender

It’s as if we still feel inferior and ashamed of being women. We are on the defensive and we attack if any man refers to anything we do as being “a female occupation”. For crying out loud, this is reverse prejudice. Why aren’t we proud of our attributes instead of becoming indignant if some man mentions ironing as if it is beneath us?

I remember when a few years ago some women decided to calculate what a housewife or “stay at home mum” was worth. This was the time when women wanted to be paid for looking after their own children. Anyhow, some brightspark listed all the things a mum does and the total came to about quarter of a million dollars per annum

How was that achieved? Well, the woman was a child minder, a nurse, a cook, a lover, a chauffeur, a cleaner (including ironing, I suppose) a counselor, a personal shopper, a barber…the list goes on and on. The problem with that is that all those jobs were calculated at the full-time salary or each one. How ridiculous is that!

And yet nobody dared dispute the figures because that would offend mums.

Politicians have to tiptoe around us in case they offend the gentler sex. To be honest, my standards as a cleaner were not professional. I was okay as a cook and I really was lousy at ironing. Thank goodness for permanent press! No reason to boast about my talents after dark either. All in all, I didn’t expect to get paid for being a mother. I was a housewife because that’s what I chose to be at the time when I wanted to be the one to take care of the children.

Poor Tony Abbott. He is the victim of his own success and the Labor Party is looking desperate when it attacks him for referring to housewives doing the ironing. This trend will continue, no doubt, as Abbott gains popularity and Rudd tells his cohorts to nitpick. I see nothing wrong with the terms housewife or househusband and believe that it is a sign of inadequacy to be so sensitive about references to gender. Vive la différence! I say.