Women also tried to change marital roles indirecdy. This was a primary strategy for traditional working mothers who desperately needed help at home but who couldn’t ask for a change in responsibilities directly or actively because they wanted the role—and whatever power came with it—themselves. Facing such a dilemma, Carmen Delacorte “played helpless” at cooking rice, paying bills, and sewing. Some women, like Nina Tanagawa, used physical illness as a half-conscious signal of distress to their husbands.
One highly successful businesswoman, Susan Pillsbury (a woman who described herself as “sharing equally” with her husband), told this story about an indirect strategy of change:
I’ve got to tell you my favorite story. When I was pregnant we were trying to think what to name the baby and we couldn’t think of a name. My husband, Jerry, wanted to have the baby but he wasn’t interested in what to name it. I didn’t want to ask him to be interested. So, you know he’s a consultant in decision analysis; that’s his specialty. I suggested that we set out “decision criteria,” like the name should be a family name, or the first name should fit the last name well, it should be a certain length. . . . Once I posed it as a problem in decision making, he got so into it he couldn’t stop. I always like to tell that story. Now he tells it.
Other passive means of getting men involved at home were more plainly manipulative, and even women who abhorred “female wiles” were sometimes desperate enough to resort to them. Nancy Holt felt it demeaned women to withhold sex from their husbands in order to “angle” for something they wanted. But when Evan persistently refused to share the work at home, Nancy did withhold sex, and felt remorseful about doing so later.