I didn’t notice it so much while I was still in remodeling and construction. Surrounded every day by carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and all the other workers, I enjoyed an almost exclusively male milieu. It wasn’t ever raucous or profane – as boss, I was responsible for establishing the tone of the conversation, hiring subcontractors of sober (if occasionally playful) mien; and deciding that the radio on the job would be tuned to NPR. But unless the lady of the house joined us for a chat at lunchtime, the only opinions and values I heard expressed were masculine. That’s not to imply chauvinistic; just masculine. It was a comfortable world.

At the same time, Mother, who’s probably the best kitchen designer I know, often has found that world to be a very uncomfortable place. Arriving at some other contractor’s job to review progress and make sure all was well and in the right place, she frequently was checked by carpenters (usually about my age; younger ones accept her at par) who’d be damned before they’d let “some woman” tell them they had the cabinets in the wrong places, or they’d framed a window opening two inches too far one way. Their manner was usually intimidating, even abusive; but to her credit, beyond sharing with me her frustrations, she always handled it herself, though it almost killed her to act apologetic and stroke a male ego that instead should have been strangled.

She’s still at, and it must be that the old chauvinist tradesmen have been retiring, because her interactions have become less stressful, and I haven’t heard a discouraging word in months. My world, however, has changed dramatically. No longer am I surrounded by the sounds of power tools and men’s voices; and my delight in daily association with half a dozen other like-minded men is but a memory. Now I spend my days working alone on my house or staring at a computer, wondering if there’s a novel in there. It had to happen – the multiple demands of the business were becoming onerous as I grew older – but I do miss it!

One thing that’s taken its place has been reading. I frequently tell aspiring writers that unless significant others are hollering at them, “All you do is read all the time!” then they probably aren’t reading enough. I’ve often heard that cry myself. A day at home without a newspaper or two is tough, and a week without New Yorker bleak. So I read a lot more now than I had time for in the past; and Mother has suddenly begun buying books, so I have a new source of information and entertainment. Considering the alternatives to reading during time not devoted to work, physical exercise, or writing, it makes great sense. And it’s what has planted the seed that’s grown into an awareness of how cultures have crippled themselves in the past, and still continue to.

First I tackled War and Peace. I read it 50 years ago as an undergraduate, but who really reads Tolstoy at that age? I’d saved it for my seventies, and now found it a page-turner. I was struck by the nostalgia expressed by Tolstoy’s characters for the reign of Catherine the Great. “Hmm,” I thought. “The Russians had a great female potentate over 200 years ago, and the English probably their greatest queen over 400 years ago – both of ‘em at least as canny and bloody-minded as any man who’s run Russia, England, or the United States ever since – and here we are still arguing whether we’re “ready” for a woman president.”

Then I descended into the hellholes of Khaled Hosseini’s novels The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. They were page-turners, too, but there was only so much calamity and frustration and despair I could stand at a time. Reading them in the evening was a mistake; they kept me awake. Not only the intractable idiocy of ethnic and tribal hatred; not only the bizarre anomaly of men kneeling to pray five times a day to a merciful Allah and rising to slaughter each other; but most of all, the subjugation of women, is what was so maddening. Was no one able to appreciate that thousands of years of male-dominated society had produced little but hatred and fear? Could nobody understand the consequences of refusing to educate half the population? And is there nothing in the literature, scriptures, or traditions of cultures that deplores the fact that a man may tell a woman what to do, or refuse her anything, simply because she is a woman? The enforced wearing of the burqa; the arrogation to themselves by men of all matters financial, political, and religious; and most of all, the beatings, inflicted for domestic infractions, or simply out of pique, and invariably affirmed as just by ecclesiastical judges – all were maddening.

It would be a mistake to interpret any of this as an anti-Muslim rant or a criticism of Afghan culture. It’s just that sometimes, when we ourselves are faced with the prospect of progress and change, and react badly, it’s helpful to have an extreme example to illuminate our own situation. We resisted the enfranchisement of women until – unbelievably – 1920; we responded to the civil rights movement by beating African-Americans in the streets of the United States; and in the afterglow of one of England’s best recent prime ministers (and Ronald Reagan’s favorite), Margaret Thatcher, we’re still debating whether we’re ready?

This is not a plug for Hillary Clinton. She’s not my favorite. It’s instead a plea that we get over it. Do you wonder, when Mitt Romney mounts the podium, about his manhood – whatever that is? Do you seriously wonder whether Ms. Clinton would be “man enough” – whatever that means – to fight terrorism? We’ve had millennia of patriarchy, male and tribal chauvinism, and warfare. Are we too stupid even to consider taking our other hand out from behind our back?