6.5 [sic] Judy (Syfers) Brady – "I Want a Wife" (1971/1972)

Author/context: American feminist essayist; the piece began as a speech at a San Francisco rally in 1971 and was published in the first issue of Ms. magazine (1972). A classic of satire — short, and best read entire (widely anthologised).Synopsis (analysis; do not reproduce the text): Writing as a wife-and-mother who "would like to have a wife," the narrator lists, with mounting irony, everything a wife does: keeps house, cares for children, arranges schooling, works to put the husband through school, feeds, entertains,remains cheerful, gives up her own education, keeps the husband's clothes ready and his appointments straight, accepts his need for freedom and monogamous patience while he takes his own — and finally, when the husband "finds another," takes the children too. Each sentence begins "I want a wife who…" until the reader sees the whole unpaid institution of wifeload. The shock of the ending — the narrator walks away from her own children, as husbands have — exposes the double standard by reversal.Themes: the gendered division of labour; unpaid care work; marriage as institution; irony as social criticism.Legal issues raised:1. Women's economic rights and unpaid work — care work as invisible labour; Art. 38 of Nepal's Constitution; CEDAW (equality in employment and family life); equal pay concepts.2. Maternity and labour protection — Nepal's Labour Act 2074: maternity leave…