I was on a phone call today, talking to an executive from a software company. The company has some nice software that is easy to use. All of a sudden I heard the dreaded phrase, “It’s so easy my mother could use/do it”. Whenever I hear this, or the similar phrase, “It’s so easy a grandmother could use/do it”, I have to say something. Typically, it is something like, “Is it so easy that your grandfather could use it too?” Today, I held back, while cringing, partly because my brain was fried from an intense session about another software product, and also because I was interested to see if my partner, a man, would say anything. He didn’t.

So, later that day I asked him if he had noticed what the guy had said. He hadn’t. I told him that the guy had said it more than once. My colleague (a really good fellow) suggested that maybe this guy had a problem with his own mother.

I then asked my fifteen year old daughter her opinion. She was surprised that someone had actually said that. I asked her what she thought the guy was implying. She responded that it sounded like the guy thought all mothers were stupid.

BINGO

So, my fifteen year old daughter hit the nail on the head. Where did this expression – the idea that even my mother or grandmother could do it come from? Are mothers that stupid? Has cooking and cleaning and taking care of their kids made them brain dead? Perhaps it is some sort of generational stereotype that men are more mechanically inclined than women because they were the ones fixing cars and such. And that somehow this translates into men being more technically inclined, as well.

This is of course, nonsense.

Always curious, I did an Internet search on this phrase and similar phrases and got more hits than I care to report. If expressions like this continue to be used and continue to enter the collective psyche, then they become self-perpetuating. The executive I mentioned above probably didn’t even realize what he was saying. My partner didn’t even notice that the guy had said it. He probably didn’t even realize that I might take offense, because hey, women are not technically inclined. It doesn’t matter that I’m a technology expert or maybe he didn’t consider that I am a mother too.

And what about the current generation?

Here’s a story that suggests that change is slow. I remember a few years back, I was helping a friend of mine out at her daughter’s birthday party. The kids were waiting on line to get some coins for the arcade machines. One boy shouted out to the person handing out the coins, “Move it, you’re as slow as a grandma!” I was shocked. I couldn’t help myself and asked him why he used grandma instead of grandpa. He had no explanation although the explanation was clear – he had heard some derogatory expression similar to this one- such as “you throw like a girl’ – and assumed that females are inferior.

So much for progress.