Exploiting women to support yourself

Well cleaning to my mind is a skilled job. Just because it is a widely held skill and traditional to women, it is not valued. My cleaner did things three times as fast I can so I paid her more or less the same hourly rate that I get paid for my skilled job.

A flexible working week, shared equally between men and women would revolutionize our patriarchal corporate system.

Corporate work life in it's current form deliberately makes it hard for women to work full time and progress economically. HR departments take one look at a woman in her 30's and a flashing red light goes off with the words "Maternity Leave" so the job goes to a man.

Then women (generally) are left trying to organise a part time job with organising a cleaner, Childminder, gardener etc etc. It's a women's place to have the part time job and manage the home.

All I garnered from your OP was how it's women's fault that women are expected to do all child care, cleaning and household management.

I don't sense any recognition that men are in most part responsible for this outsourcing.

For a feminist response, I'd recommend you point out to Dads that they need to step up in parental leave, in organising household and childcare management, and not have all of these essential jobs fall at women's feet.

www.thenation.com/article/after-i-lived-in-norway-america-felt-backward-heres-why/

Just read this, and wondered if anyone could comment on the gender & country of origin of cleaners & childcare assistants in Norway.

The point of feminism isn't to try and make all women equal with each other. the point of feminism is to make women equal with their male counterparts. If we want everyone equal with each other that's socialism/communism.

Feminism would want women equal to men whether in socialist, communist, fascist, capitalist etc. economy.

Yes, I benefit from the lower paid women I sub-contract some of my parenting out to (piano teacher, teacher, childcare, cleaner) if you look at it from a purely female point of view., and assume that women are the only ones responsible for women's work.

If you look at it from the pov that women get lumbered with far too much shit work and that men should be doing more of it, then actually it is men who are exploiting the cleaners etc because they should just damn well step up and take on some of the wife work. The fact that their wife is probably the one who organizes the cleaner is just another example of the man side-stepping their responsibility and getting a woman to take care of his shit. (btw, there are many surveys that show getting a cleaner means that the man does less work, and the woman still works and does cleaning)

It's very disingenuous to say that mc women are exploiting wc women, without thinking about how the men should be doing their fucking share!

I think if traditionally female jobs such as childcare, teaching assistants and cleaners were paid a reasonable living wage then there would no longer be any exploitation. And I would also argue that these jobs are skilled to a certain extent. These jobs need to be done, but it is reasonable to hope that those doing them can live on the wage they are paid.

I agree with everything said by the CatFromJapan

To really get a handle on this, we have to look not just at the interactions of different females. We also have to take into account social class, education, race, religion etc.

There will always be a need for the lower-paid, easier to get into jobs like cleaning, factory work etc. The fact that the lowest paid of these are overwhelmingly female dominated is where the questions need to be asked. Also, when looking back over history, when a job changes from being mainly men to mainly women the wages tend to go down.

I'm sure that the answers are complex and can only be found in hindsight, but a couple of points that I think are valid:

1. Employing someone properly and paying them well isn't the same as exploitation. People can build up a business and make a 'career' out of cleaning, so making sure that the work is valued and treated as a real job is very important.

1. People can have many jobs over the course of their lives. If we make it possible for people to be flexible and move from one job sector to another then there is less chance for exploitation. I did plenty of entry-level 'lowly' jobs when younger, and got into my first 'proper' job at age 25. Making things like education and training easily accessible to people is another important aspect. That's why it's so important to have adult education classes, free/cheap universities and libraries etc.

I like the idea that people can start off in a lower paid job, maybe do further training, get into higher paid positions etc. We need the 'basic' jobs to be done (imagine if we suddenly had no refuse collection). But people also need to be able to move on if they want to. Of course, that then means that many people couldn't afford housing etc until their 30s, which is a whole other problem.

I don't think "the de-gendering of women's work" is advanced by the OP's opening post.

Why is paying a cleaner to do cleaning automatically seen as one woman paying another woman to do women's work.?

Somebody has to clean my house and look after the garden - neither my husband nor I have the time or the inclination to do the cleaning and neither the time, inclination or knowledge to do the gardening so someone else has to. We don't have a joint account- the cleaner and the gardener get paid by whichever of us has the right cash on the days they come, failing which a squabble about whose turn it is to go to the cash machine.

I think cleaning IS a skilled job.

I agree.

When my mother got a cleaner, he was...he, a man. (Coincidentally, someone I'd been at school with, though that didn't click till some weeks in.)

I think this is more about what is traditionally women's work being undervalued (I've said at work before, we'd miss the cleaners if they went a lot sooner than we'do miss most other people.)

No one raises an eyebrow at men who get a cleaner; why should they at women? I know lots of women who work hard outside the home. Why should they be expected to spend their spare time doing chores, if someone else can do it and they can afford to pay for it? Men aren't expected to do that usually. We should pay those who do those jobs well enough for doing it. As I have got older and had more spare cash, I am more inclined to pay people to do the things I don't want to spend my limited spare time doing, but still need doing. The money I earn is then helping others to have an income. (Admittedly a pretty small income in my case - I mostly only outsource car-related stuff, as I like gardening, and I don't care about living with a bit of dust.)

Actually I think cleaning IS a skilled job. i know it's not categorised as such politically/socially, but therein lies some of the problem

I think it's interesting that, despite women having been in the workforce in large numbers for some time now, the de-gendering of 'women's work' just hasn't happened.

It is still done largely by women, it's still under-valued, and it's often invisible!

Yes, to previous poster who has pointed out that it is the gendering of this work that it enables it to be theorised as women outsourcing their (expected) roles to be performed by other women.

'Women's work' has proved to be remarkably intransigent. This suggests that it is a huge necessity in the functioning of capitalism. And is therefore never, ever as simple as one woman exploiting another to enable herself. Yes, there is an uncomfortable element of that but, I would say, it is far outweighed by the far larger system of exploitation in which it takes place.

If you don't want to exploit low paid labour then pay your cleaner more.

Exactly this. My cleaner is lovely, I pay her properly for providing a valuable service. Not as much as o charge for maths tuition but it isn't a skilled job.

Paying your cleaner more may be a. Option; most people have many fewer cleaner hours than working hours per week.

Childcare costs are usually incurred during working hours (plus commuting hourS) - it is neither possible norcecinomically rational to pay a childcarer in gross pay more than one parent's net pay.

Are you sure lots of Eastern European women with children are leaving them at home to come over here? Undoubtedly there are really poor areas in EE, but in general, even in the poorest countries, there are some benefits/state accommodation of parents with children/state education/healthcare service and people are in general, not that dissimilar to many Western countries. There are very poor services for those with mental health problems, but they are not coming here to work; there are also communities such as Roma which are poorer than the average non-Roma person in those EE but again, I don't know of any working long-term here and leaving children behind them, they have freedom of movement and tend to prefer to move as a family, like most immigrants.

There is a huge youth drain in EE countries as the young twenty somethings come to Western countries (not just UK, Germany, France, Canada) and get jobs- and yes, typical entry jobs are cleaning and care work, as they don't require quals. I know lots of well-educated degree level EE single people doing these type of jobs.

My cleaner is not from EE but another European country with a high unemployment rate, she only came to the UK less than a year ago and loves it here as her business collapsed and within a couple of weeks, all of her family (her, father, older dd) have found work as cleaners and as a bar manager, they think the UK is great in terms of mobility/employment opportunities and already the dd has been promoted at work, so they are happy to pay the bills/have jobs again.

Is that exploitative? Capitalism certainly hasn't favoured them, but personally I think they are enterprising and sensible people who have done the best for their family in the circumstances they find themselves in. I don't know anyone leaving their children behind, I know lots of immigrant families and when they move, in general the whole family comes and benefits economically, as whilst one is working as a cleaner, they may also be studying quals/training/another gets a more professional job.

Both men and women do jobs with a variety of salaries and skill levels (not necessarily directly correlated).

Defining child care and cleaning as women's "expected" work enables this to be seen as one woman exploiting another, in some way to "avoid" what is rightfully her job. And because the work itself is devalued, is supposed to be the women's interstitial responsibility, there is judgement from some for laziness/exploitation.

I'm posting from a taxi; we can all drive, driving isn't overly skilled work, yet no one feels I am exploiting my taxi driver.

Tendon that was going to be exact my point.
The crux of the matter is that cleaning and caring is seen as women's responsibility - either to perform or to outsource to another woman. The statements in the op make this assumption.

For what it's worth, I think this area is HUGE. I think it's going to get bigger, too, as more working women are expected to care for the elderly.

It's massively under theorised.

I took albert to be making a universal point, not speaking to you personally.

I agree with campion and the poster who said you can hardly expect to take down capitalism in one, fell move.

Two points: you have to accept that (sometimes huge) power inequalities inhere between women. These may be structural but sometimes we will be brought face to face with them. Yes, sometimes, as women, we exploit other women. Often, we won't want to and may struggle against that (eg. By paying the cleaner more; by paying more for childcare).
We may realise that is a partial solution and un satisfying, so we may widen our struggle ( campaign for state- subsidised childcare) and then widen it still (protest against unfair working conditions in the developing world).
It is unlikely any of those will dismantle capitalism overnight.
But, there again, nothing will change if we don't try.

Point 2: don't just look at the women!!!! In whose interest is it to bewail middle class women exploiting working class women?
The childcare example is crucial. Are the female exploiters exploiting the child carers for a laugh? Are they making millions doing it? Are we missing something?
By concentrating on the exploitation of child carers by working women(!) you miss a whole discussion about fathers, the individualisation of having children, the triple burden most women now have , ....

Masses, basically.

Pay them more and don't employ any East Europeans then they can stay in poverty with their children.