Is it ever acceptable to hire a cleaner?

I have chatted to a woman I know about this question more generally, and her perspective was interesting. She grew up in a country where everyone, including professional women, were expected to do their own housework, hiring a cleaner would have been socially unacceptable

Was everyone expected to do their own housework? Something tells me that professional men weren't.

I've hired cleaners, baby sitters, nannies and childminders - all women. The only time they were underpaid or had inflexible working was the one time DP got our clean through an agency rather than through personal recommendation.

The rest of the time it's been win-win. The woman got employment that fitted round her other responsibilities (generally kids, sometimes looking after parents too), and I got someone to help out with the things that needed to be done but I was working, and wanted to spend time with my kids when I wasn't rather than clean the house etc.

It's completely feminist to pay a fair wage for fair labour (always above the living wage, always a fair amount of work and great flexibility over how/when it was done - aside from childcare - but even then, the nanny brought her own child, I paid mileage and expenses as well as salary, and if anyone was sick, I still paid).

The only reason cleaning is seen as unskilled by so many, like caring, is because it tends to be women who do it

I don't agree. Being a gardener requires a certain type of expertise and knowledge.

I'm a cleaner and really, the job is not that hard.

You do need to know what products to use of each surface, be able to see dirt/dust and prioritise your work. But everyone can acquire these skills after cleaning for a short while.

The only difficult part about cleaning is cleaning homes/offices that are very very dirty.

agree the article itself was trolling women on IWD

Your lofty proclaiming on this is singing from the same hymn sheet.

Don't families hire cleaners?

Some will be hired by families , some by single women and some by single men. The Guardian and Janeskettle however only seem interested in pontificating and telling off women.

The question was about women, so answered thusly, but yes, it should be a family decision (if there is another parent living in the home) - it most often isn't though, in families headed by a heterosexual couple, and of course that needs challenging.

I agree the article itself was trolling women on IWD.

Only acceptable if the cleaner is a man! (I do know several men who are professional house cleaners)

Agree re gardeners.

Also why do they get paid so much more. Both can be light or heavy, both are a lot of moving stuff around, tidying up essentially. Both are coming to your home. Both are skilled. The only reason cleaning is seen as unskilled by so many, like caring, is because it tends to be women who do it.

Don't families hire cleaners?

Most people I know who have cleaners have kids and work, and time is short to do the house stuff too.

If it's a het couple, why is it seen as the women who is doing this hiring? It comes from the same place as women in het couples often being responsible for the childcare. The men are often invisibilised in this. As it's 'women's work' it's the woman's responsibility and also if there is fault it's hers too. What about childcare, childminders etc. They are usually women and pay can be low. Is that also something the woman should be doing? And it's wrong to outsource? Meanwhile the men tend to be left to carry on with none of the organisation and no newspapers writing articles about how awful they are for doing their best to get by in a place that's centred around paid work, in workplaces designed by men for men, with 'women's work' undervalued and supposed to happen with no complaint and for free (caring, cleaning etc).

This is simply a way to have a go at women for not knowing their place (at home) isn't it.

This just feels like another way to criticise individual women for the failings of a society which doesn’t value cleaning and care work

I can understand that.

I suppose, as feminists, we need to acknowledge that society is shit when it comes to women's labor, and together, put some feminist effort towards fixing that. Because the Labor parties globally have lost interest in us, and nobody else is going to do it.

I remember finding out what the preschool teachers were paid per hour at the preschool my eldest attended and being absolutely shocked.

I didn't pull her out of preschool, but I sure as heck supported the childcare union in their efforts to raise their wages, with monetary support, lobbying and getting out with petitions, at rallies etc.

Anyway, as my kids are fond of saying 'no good choices under capitalism, mum'. It's a systemic problem, and actually, individual women being decent employers of other women is only a start.

But the questionwas 'is it OK for a feminist to have a cleaner' and my answer was 'Yes, if you apply feminist ethics to the transaction.'

Not 'no, all women who hire cleaners are bad people, and cleaning is a terrible shameful job'.

Now, if the question had been 'is it ever OK for The Guardian to troll women on IWD with articles about cleaners', my answer may have been more to your liking.

You sound defensive to be honest. Saying the wages you pay are above living wage for example. That’s still not great is it.

Our society values people who work in industries which make individuals very rich (eg banking) as opposed to those which provide much needed support (eg childcare).

We all buy into it and have little choice as women who want to work. It’s a structural problem.

The best we can do is try and highlight the problems, make shit loads of noise about it and work to change it.

I was being a bit flippant, and I do get the point. However, I hire a cleaner to clean my house, and use trained childcare to help care for my child. All of these people are paid in excess of the Living Wage (the real living wage, not NMW). The money I’m spending (and I was conscious of choosing where to spend it) is helping provide stable employment.

This just feels like another way to criticise individual women for the failings of a society which doesn’t value cleaning and care work. I don’t feel guilty for hiring a cleaner or using a nursery.

women hiring women on shit pay

And with shit conditions. It happens. It's a problem. Yes, men do it too, but feminists are supposed to care about other women, and that includes the economic lives of women working in traditionally devalued industries.

It’s not as simplistic as hiring a male cleaner makes it ok. The point already made is that it’s about women hiring women on shit pay which just reinforces the problem with our capitalist society.

Our capitalist society consistently under values the type of work that women are normally seen to do and do it for no or ver little pay. Caring, cleaning etc.

I think it’s a valid point.

My cleaner is a man. Is that allowed?

I remember Lass (I miss her) once saying something along the lines that people don't value jobs that everyone can or has to do at some point. So because cleaning is something that just needs to be done by everyone, it's undervalued.

But actually, ime, it's not an easy skill to learn if no one bothers to teach you. I am teaching myself and my dyspraxic brain struggles.
If you are good at cleaning and you build a thriving business upon that, that should be valued precisely because it is something that everyone needs.

We’re now at a halfway point between highly gendered wage inequality and gender-blind widespread working poverty

Great point, AriettyJones

Why on earth couldn't women who clean be feminists?

I've cleaned; I was a feminist.

goosefoot

Many of the very intractable problems that feminism talks about around work simply can't be divorced from the context of problems in capitalism.

Absolutely. This is clearly a standard position taken by feminists who are also engaged with issues of economic inequality.

The flip side of what she's saying is that women who clean for a living aren't feminists either. Because working class feminists either train to be plumbers or become middle class presumably

However, the issue of middle and upper class women succeeding, partially on the backs of low paid working class women is a real one, and although it upsets many to speak about in the feminist movement, and isn't a popular topic for discussion, the conversation needs to be had.

Yes, this is the larger conversation around employment. Many of the very intractable problems that feminism talks about around work simply can't be divorced from the context of problems in capitalism. And it requires looking at the larger picture of work for context as well though that doesn't always happen. You can read about the problems of the 50s housewife feeling isolated and unfulfilled while her husband went out into world to do paid labour, and it seems right to think that the solution is for the wife to do the same, but what if the man going out to paid labour, separate from his home establishment and family, is part of the problem?

About a year ago I was ill and started to watch episodes of The Royal from the beginning, mainly because I wanted something not too complicated or disturbing. I really enjoyed it though, the look at society as it was changing in the 60s. One of the things that struck me was the woman doctor who over the course of the show marries and has several children and decides to keep working. She's shown as being a feminist part of the new way of thinking about women, and she's usually seen as being in solidarity with other women in the show. It struck me very forcefully though that that was in some ways an illusion. She could work because she could hire a nanny and au pair, and even so her family would have benefited financially with two professional incomes. This was quite different than the working class women who came to the practice, hiring a nanny wouldn't be an option, and even conceptually switching work with their husbands wouldn't be an option, as they were fishermen and farmers, not something easily done when pregnant and not something where you can take time off. So they remained one income families while the professional families could potentially become two income families and the gap between them increased.

Which looks a lot more like bourgeoisie class solidarity than feminist solidarity. That's not something that is easily separable from questioning capitalism, and the whole issue of capitalisation of more and more elements of life is part of the same discussion, from domestic work to childcare.

How is it a feminist issue, do men and organisations not employ cleaners too? Is it somehow wrong as a woman to pay another woman to clean my home or workplace?
Surely as long as its work for a fair price, there shouldn't be any problem. Although i do understand there are still a lot of people who exploit/underpay for what they consider to be menial or unskilled work.
(Just to clarify I dont think cleaning is unskilled at all, I think that not only do they juggle all the housework, cleaning, laundry, deliveries, client/family preferences added tasks and discretion they leave the house looking fresh and clean and organised in a way that most people dont manage all in one go, I actually think they are wonderful, making our homes better places to be, absolute stars)

Curious as to what anyone else thinks a fair price is for a cleaner

I'm solidly middle class and one of my best friends is a solidly working class cleaner. She earns a lot more than her DP, who does a variety of minimum wage jobs which are inflexible and hard. She makes her own hours and someone has to because their son has a disability and needs flexibility.

However there is a low unemployment rate. I'm very sure things would be different for her if there were people queuing up for her jobs.

The intersection of feminism and Marxism is important. If the market changes, her life does too, even if her sex remains the same.

One of my BILs works full time as a cleaner. He’s an African immigrant who spoke no English when he arrived, so a cleaning job was one of the few options available to him.
He works hard and is well thought of by his employer. There is no shame attached to his job.
DD1 and her partner both work full time and have health issues. They employ an East European couple as cleaners for their house. DD1 is a Communist and radical feminist - she sees no conflict in providing employment so a couple can afford to live in Britain, and she respects her cleaners and values their honest toil.

It is ridiculous to say women are not allowed to employ staff to facilitate their own working life. We all employ plumbers, electricians, car mechanics etc- why is cleaning any different?
It sounds like classic guilt tripping of working women - “A woman’s place is in the wrong”.

I'd like a cleaner too, but I'm not in a position to employ a cleaner for a living wage. So I do my own cleaning.

So really what you’re saying @janeskettle is that the wage level is what makes the difference between buying services from an independent contractor versus exploiting fellow women. I entirely agree.

Besides this isn’t the 70s any more. The wage agreements and union structures that kept most men on a living wage (even WC men) and most women unable to be self supporting have gone. The heavy industry has gone. We are a much vaunted “service economy” with men and women in their millions struggling on unliveable NMW.

We’re now at a halfway point between highly gendered wage inequality and gender-blind widespread working poverty.

So - yep - it’s the money that matters.