Domesticity and Femininity

I think it's assumed that housework takes no knowledge but there are plenty of people floundering. Witness all those posts on Mumsnet from people who dry washing indoors and don't know where their damp problem is coming from.

Datun, I was thinking about that the other day - I equated gardening and cleaning - both intensive manual labour which I outsource given the chance - and even my own head told me 'but gardening is a skill, you need to know about plants n stuff' - and well, cleaning is also a skill, you also need to know what can be washed with what, what cleaning products are safe/useful where etc. It's not like we spring into being able to sort washing any more than someone knows how to prune the roses!

Yy to all the points made above. But also a big side order of architects being massively aesthetically focused impractical and arrogant.

This book
www.amazon.co.uk/Gentle-Art-Domesticity-Jane-Brocket/dp/0340950986?tag=mumsnetforum-21
Is a nice look at some of the more traditional female centred domestic roles and places value on them. It isn't a deliberately feminist book, by any means but I enjoyed the value placed on these traditional female tasks (baking, knitting, raising children) undertaken as a choice. I haven't read it for a long time but I do remember it was unabashedly positive about choice in domestic roles.

those highly skilled and unappreciated jobs that we women did have gone

Whilst this is no doubt true, I think cleaning and keeping a house running, budgeting, raising children (particularly in this day and age when there is an expectation for vast amounts of time investment in them), is often not at all easy.

And it increases exponentially with the number of children you have.

Scheduling often takes military precision. Add taking care of elderly parents (and possibly working part time) into the mix and I don't think it's at all easy.

We may not be growing our own food, and making our marmalade from scratch, but I think current expectations of women are no less demanding. And they remain unappreciated.

I recently made DD a hoodie for school. Because it was a rush job, I was doing a lot of the work when DH was in the house. I had to convert a bigger pattern and mess with it because I only had an adult pattern. After a couple of days DH realized that sewing is really fucking hard. It's design and maths and 3D imaging and manual dexterity and a lot of visual-spatial stuff that we all know women can't do.

In the olden days, that was what housework was; brewing, weaving, making dyes and tending bees, gardening, knowing the seasons and the magic of home remedies. We've lost and outsourced a lot of that which is a great shame. And turned the chores into scrubbing taps with a toothbrush.

An ancestor of DH's was a healer (witch!) and my GM could knock up tiny, perfect clothes for dolls that were tailored. Life, I suppose, has become easier but those highly skilled and unappreciated jobs that women did have gone.

So then the question becomes why are necessary things given such low status if they are actually of high value?

Possibly , because they are necessary which means vast amounts of people do them and succeed. Potty training is messy and tedious but it's not actually difficult and , special needs aside, everyone gets there in the end. On the one hand, extremely necessary for civilised society and at the same time, no big deal.

Housework and cleaning are the same. Everyone has to do it, and special needs aside, everyone can do it. A minority of people pay others to do it , but that is generally because they don't want to, not because they can't . It's boring but , talk it up as much as you like , it's not difficult.

Gardening is different. I pay someone else to clean and do the garden. If the cleaner doesn't turn up I ignore it for 1 week but will be forced to do something about it after 2. Gardening I'd have to read up about it to do properly.

I was trying to think of the male equivalent. A job perceived as easy and therefore low status

Being a bin-man? In the old days being a night soil man?

I read somewhere that the low status of women's work has to do with old taboos around bodies, bodily fluids and waste in general. I can't remember much more, but the argument went that those jobs that involved urine, faeces, sick, pus, blood etc. were low status because of very old taboos around these. That doesn't explain the high status of medicine (as opposed to surgery, which was once considered on a parallel with being a barber) , but perhaps it is something about the conflation of sex and bodies / fluids???

Elendon no, no gardens are for sitting in. Preferably with food and wine. If I didn't have DH I'd have to employ a gardener I detest gardening, with the very small exception of my herb pots.

I think you are right about not valuing jobs we see as chores. Which is interesting. We should really place extra value on jobs we don't want to do because we perceive them to be unpleasant.

Datun afraid I can't link to any statistics but I'm pretty confident I'm correct. I've definitely heard the numbers quoted. I'll do some digging.

For me, housework is a chore to be done and perhaps this is why people get cleaners in. It's a job they don't want to do but see it as a chore and therefore, in a counter intuitive way, less respected. Of course if the cleaner left, there would be problems.

But there is a craft and skill in doing housework and this should be reflected in the status and payment.

Butter

I like crafting, cooking, gardening and DIY. When I was married, I did mainly the crafting and the gardening. If I had to pick a favourite it would be gardening (I was a paid gardener for five years and well paid and respected!). Gardening has it all.

I agree with the value and status thing post 1900s or so datun but think it wasn't as black and white before then.

Of course, it is definitely true now!

butter

I'm not surprised! Is there data on the reasons for that?

datun male nurses are more likely to go on to higher paid roles as senior nurses or managers. They are far less likely to remain at the bedside.

Interesting topic OP.

My personal feminism mantra is about equal choice. I am able to work in a well paid career, most years earning more than DH. Alternatively I can choose to stay at home.

As it happens, I like cooking and crafting and DH likes gardening and DIY. We follow broadly traditional roles and I don't see this as incompatible with feminism. I have a choice after all and I'm proud that I'm good at these things.

Where I think it becomes more difficult is the extent to which it is genuine free choice and the extent it is socialisation and cultural norms. I am über aware of this through raising daughters. However much I strive to raise my DC equally, I see my DDs receiving different messages to my DS from the world at large.

Is it because they are perceived as easy to do?

I was thinking about cleaners. Everyone who has a cleaner knows the value of that cleaner, it's immense. It's also one of the most low status jobs there is. It's also mostly women.

Likewise carers.

I was trying to think of the male equivalent. A job perceived as easy and therefore low status.

Working on a building site, although manual labour is not perceived as low status. The necessary component, i.e. strength, has high status.

The necessary (or let's say ideal) component of being a carer is compassion. Not perceived as high status.

It's difficult to find equivalents.

Even nursing. Traditionally a female role. There are many more male nurses now, but eyebrows still get raised and people still wonder why they are not a doctor. Or wonder why they picked nursing in the first place. They never question why women pick nursing. That attitude is slowly diminishing, but the fact that it was there in the first place should say something. And funnily enough, I am wondering whether male nurses are viewed as slightly lower status than female ones? Is it because the attributes typically associated with nursing, compassion, nurturing, empathy, etc are viewed 'feminine' and therefore as less somehow.

The point about women being taught to spin, sew, bake etc making them more marriageable is true but as a pp has said, it's because that work had value in feeding and clothing a family.

I'm wondering if there is a subtle difference here. Of course the work had value in terms of making everyone's life easier. But it didn't have status. It still doesn't.

I'm reminded of that cartoon with a woman sitting at home surrounded by undressed children, dirty dishes, unfed dog, clothes and crap everywhere and saying to the shocked man when he comes home from work: "You know you ask me what on earth I do all day at home? Well today I didn't do it."

I think it's partly capitalism that's to blame here (ooh am I finally getting to grips with intersectionality? )

The point about women being taught to spin, sew, bake etc making them more marriageable is true but as a pp has said, it's because that work had value in feeding and clothing a family. In the same way as a physically disabled man wouldn't have been marriageable in a rural village. Women and men's roles were incredibly separate but they both had equal value when it came to feeding the family and maintaining the home.

Then capitalism came along and consumerism came with it and the traditional women's work was replaced by machines. We were fed a line that this was freeing us to do other things - men went to work in officies and women's work became immediately devalued (essentially, look pretty, child rear and for goodness sake add a slick of lipstick before your husband comes home).

Of course this removal of the essential work was good in some ways because it freed women to be educated and to join the workforce in other ways. But that rump of wifework refused to go away, so it became even more devalued and something that had to be 'got through' in order to get on with the real work of being a woman (career girl or sahm child-rearer).

All of this is designed to feed capitalism and consumerism - why sew a beautiful cushion yourself when you could work for two hours to raise enough money to buy one?

Sorry, long answer but I find this fascinating.

I meant to add that they were not only practical and skilled but also beautiful.

Yes, I agree that what a woman does artistically or in a practical way, or both, is often demeaned.

The idea that women's work is of less value persists.

Women have always made pots, but because their pots were used for mundane things like cooking and storing things, they aren't art, men make artistic pots that are used for looking at.

Women have always cooked, but, because it was for the mundane purpose of filling hungry bellies, it was just cooking, men are chefs and make pretty food that you need to stop for a kebab after you've eaten it.

Women have always spun and weaved and made textiles, but again, it was for putting clothes on people backs or making bedding or sacking, men design creations.

Men create art, women paint because they're bored or want to get married.

Society only seems to value the domestic arts if they're done by men. Which is weird.

When women quilted, knitted and did crochet it was a way of getting together and doing something that occupied the brain whilst at the same time was socialising and passing down wisdom from generation to generation. These are excellent skill sets, mathematical and practical. In those times women were largely excluded from education and university, consequently getting well paid employment.

Now the skill set seems to be how to manage the house and childcare whilst maintaining the well paid employment. Obviously the skills of crafting have disappeared and are seen as hobbies (expensive too).

There used to be loads more in the past, and still a few today, religious sects where you cannot do any work on the Sabbath. Any work. Any wotk . Theyd walk to church because hitching up the buggy was considered work. But people still managed to not starve all day, bsbies were fed and nappies changed. You get where I'm going here...

I think there's a general trend for things that are done by women to be less valued, because women are less valued.
In most countries doctors are well paid, but in Russia, where doctors are more likely to be women, they're not well paid at all.

The same as how teaching was once a well paid, well respected job and has become less so as the percentage of men has gone down.

im following a group onFB about mending and giving a second life to things.
What I'm finding particularly fascinating is that someone a woman reusing bits of material to make a rug is idle, art and craft, maybe useful but not great quality iyswim.

Then when someone usually man is reusing a plastic bottle to make a container and pouring device for bird seeds, then it's not art and craft anymore, it's a DIY project and it's very good and a thoughtful creation.

Maybe the bottom line is that it actually says more about our society than it does about how useful/complex/worth it these objects are iyswim.