Curator Grace Aneiza Ali was struck when she first came across the definition of women’s work in the Oxford Dictionary: “work traditionally and historically undertaken by women, especially tasks of a domestic nature such as cooking, needlework and child rearing.”
While the dictionary, first written by lexicographer James A. H. Murray in 1879, has been updated quarterly for nearly the past two decades, the definition of “women’s work” remains.
“My jaw dropped when I saw ‘women’s work’ still being this antiquated definition,” Ali said, “in what one would argue is one of the primary dictionaries in the world.”
It wasn’t because she devalued or dismissed this type of work that she was bothered—it was that the definition was so limiting. Her outrage begs the question: Who gets to define, and what happens when those being defined don’t have a say?
