Jill Murray

I missed it when she first posted it, but wayyyy back in May, Smartygirl commented on the following statements by Michael Brossard, senior vice-president of marketing and development at Rona, the Quebec-based home improvement chain:

…women are becoming more involved in purchasing decisions. But even as Rona reaches out to them, Mr. Brossard says he sees no need to stock female-friendly power tools. “In general, they’re not doing the heavy work,” he said.

“Tools is still the toy section for guys. Will it become the toy section for girls? I don’t think so.”

Despite the statistics on women buying and renovating homes, Mr. Brossard said, “A single woman will have a dad, a boyfriend, an uncle to help them. It’s not as though they’re totally alone.”

I wont go into detail ripping this apart because Ms. Smart already did a good job of it. A few of comments of hers that resonated with me:

• I have been known to let my husband borrow my tools, although after the way he messed up my chisel, that happens less frequently.

• The only difficulty I have ever had with any project is not weakness, or feminine incompetence, it is good old procrastination, which I know for a fact affects men as much as women.

• My husband does offer to help with heavy lifting, but he knows that if I’m working on a project he’d best just get out of my way, as having people underfoot just makes me cranky.
  

I think the scenarios she describes are far more common than popular mythology would have us believe, and certainly more-so than Mr. Promoted-to-the-least-of-his-abilities Marketing Guy realizes.

Projects go down in my house much the way they do in Smarty’s, The Rapper having admitted that prior to our recent painting escapades, the largest home improvement he had ever attempted was to mow one lawn once. The tools are mine. The barbecue is mine. The remote controls are still mainly his, but come on, people, get with reality.

As for the issue of woman-friendly power tools, Smarty doesn’t feel she needs them. She can lift anything anyway. What I’m not sure she or Yo Marketing Dumbass realize is that the concept of woman-friendly power tools isn’t just that they’re lighter or that they come pink or something, although weight is part of it. The idea is that they can be operated easily with smaller hands, or that their balance is calibrated so they work better with the ratios and proportions of a woman’s body (much like women’s shoes need to support the actual proportions of a woman’s feet, which are different from those of a man), so the woman isn’t working against the tool. Essentially: that a power tool is supposed to do more of the work for you. Using one shouldn’t be a question of strength or force in the first place. In something like a drill, this isn’t a big deal, but when it comes to, say, chainsaws or heavy industrial equipment, it can play a serious role in injury prevention. It’s a question of physiology, not ability or aptitude.