Yesterday, a close friend asked a favor, for me to go over to a rental home he has and find why his tenant didn't have power in the outlets at the back of the house. A quick check confirmed our initial suspicion that the not-too-sharp tenant didn't understand how to reset a circuit breaker. With his absence I took the wife/girlfriend to the service panel and pointed out how when the breaker is not COMPLETELY in the 'on' position, you first have to flip it to the 'off' position, THEN to the 'on' position, so the mechanical linkage can engage and close the contact until an overload current causes the magnets inside to open it and prevent over heating. She made a disgruntled comment about "He's a man. He's spose to know bout dat! "

Two things ran through my mind as I drove home, about the comment. Why in this age of 'equality' and political correctness, does being born male, intuitively endow that person with technical knowledge and why does it exclude another gender from minimal functioning abilities of the world they have equal ownership/management rights and responsibilities in?

Understanding the exclusion of old attitude holdovers and also that there are people who's learning capabilities are much lower than others, the question becomes how much of our expectation and personal responsibilities are still shrouded in gender based views of life. Why is it still the 'understood' job of the man to connect the new DVD player into the cable-VCR-home theater-stereo-TV system? Why are we still surprised/impressed when a lady pops open the hood of another car and correctly connects jumper cables to start it?

We all know of exceptions to some of these stereotypes, but is our view of "the division of labor" only focused in the work place? You may not feel the need to know the internal workings of a circuit breaker, but as a home owner, does your gender preclude or obligate you to or from knowing the basic operating functions?

Or has the whole technical nature of our environment become so overwhelming that we use the subconscious gender designation as a default to relieve ourselves of basic responsibilities of everyday function? This thought can expand to many aspect of our 'western social structure' (as it USE to be known ), but do you feel there are areas of unconscious gender biases, outside the work place, for expectation, limitation and excuse in all of us?

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