AIBU to think women escaped domesticity by hiring other women to do it?

[AlloaintheMiddle]

This has been on my mind for a while, give me your thoughts.

There’s so much talk about modern womanhood, career success, independence, “having it all”… but often, that freedom seems to rely heavily on other women stepping in to do the work they’re now too busy (or unwilling) to do: childcare, cleaning, cooking, eldercare….

It’s rarely men picking up the slack. It’s almost always other women, often migrant, often poorly paid, and working long hours to support their own families while making it possible for more privileged women to “lean in.”

AIBU to feel like this isn’t really liberation so much as delegation, and that it doesn’t dismantle gendered domestic roles, it just shifts the burden to women lower down the socioeconomic ladder? And men still get away with it?

What do you think?

Their hourly rates tend to be much higher than rates charged for roles traditionally filled by women.

My lovely cleaner is a man.

But you probably work 7 or 8 hours per day whereas it's not physically possible for a cleaner to do this. Her hourly rate includes travel to the home and prep. If she is working a full day that's at best 2 x 3 hour cleans so 6 hours wages for a full day of physical labour.

You’d be lucky to get a cleaner for under £20 ph where I am.

Our cleaners are a team usually a mix of men and women. I find this op so odd and misogynistic. Is op saying women should do certain jobs in the house for free because they are women and should feel guilty if they do not? But hiring men to do gardening etc or mechanics to sort the car is acceptable? That is actually fucking insane.

You have a point, but the one of the big arguments is that we don’t recognise the economic value of caring/domestic responsibilities. Outsourcing them does put a price on them which recognises this.

We have a cleaner and we are not high earners - but I’m hopeless at it and it makes me miserable. and DH did not do his fair share.

This way, there are no arguments and it comes out of household income.

As long as people are paid and treated well I don’t see a problem.

The care crisis is a brilliant example of what happens when women withdraw from the work they previously did for free and zero appreciation and acknowledgment. Dh granny cared for her own parents and in laws at home.

Women now are either working or refuse to do this anymore so it has to be paid for and my god it costs a lot. I find it infuriating the little value placed on women’s labour.

My next door neighbour’s gardeners come as often as their cleaners. Once a week.

When I could afford it, I outsourced my cleaning because I hate it and I am happy to pay someone else to do it.

My clients outsourced their admin to me. They could have done it but preferred not to.

As long as the job is paid well and no one is forced into it, what’s the difference between hiring someone to do your admin and to do your cleaning?

Not new, always been the same. Everyone had servants if they could possibly afford them, maids, cooks, odd job men, whatever. Financially poor women went into service Below Stairs, Lark Rise to Candleford are autobiographies and show domestic service was very much the norm for poor girls. It's only in the last century things changed, I think, wages, labour supply, technology all had a part to play.
My great aunt, born sometime in the 1890s, never married and became a housekeeper to a male relative, her cousin similarly. Domestic skills were valued.

PP has it in one. Men are not judged if they hire a garden or tree surgeon for example. We have a cleaner via an agency. Properly paid with holiday leave etc. Sometimes the cleaner sent by the agency is male. If someone is properly employed/paid then why are we made to feel bad about it?

I am dying from the exhaustion of working and parenting but I cannot let myself get a cleaner. It’s just one of those internal barriers from being WC. I used to be a cleaner too and was always struck by women paying me and their husbands seeming like they had loads of time on their hands (gaming whilst I was there). I would not be paying for a cleaner if my husband was at home ‘working from home/ gaming’

Admittedly a few years ago, but I costed up the price of:

• weekly cleaner, 2h
• weekly housekeeper, 2h
• fortnightly gardener
• fortnightly handyman (obvs wouldn't use fortnightly but averaging over a year)
• fortnightly PA, 2h

It came to something like £12000. More now, obviously.

I know. And that's why I don't have an issue with paying her £25 per hour when I earn £17.85 per hour. If she works 6 hours a day and I get paid for 7 then she still out earns me. Great. She's earning a living and so do I and we both do it in a way that suits our needs.

I hire a man to do my gardening and a woman to do my cleaning. They applied for the job / they were who turned up.

I didn’t care what sex they were, I just needed help.

My cleaner does 30hrs a week across her clients at £23/hr. Gets holiday pay. That’s over £35k a year. More than most graduates earn within 5 years of leaving university.

The idea that this is minimum wage for the equivalent of working on a chain gang is farcical.

Shouldn't the phenomenon you call "white feminism" really be called "rich feminism"?

Plus the notion that other members of the household should be involved and not just the woman.

Probably because they don't want it all. The all being housework/the bulk of childcare.

Try find a provate cleaner for minimum wage 😆😆😆 you realise many of the women who do these jobs may not have the language or other skills to easily get them into other employment? Or that perhaps they like the flexibility that these jobs (like cleaning) offer?

I was quite upset with a family member recently who was talking about a cleaner that was there for a couple of weeks, twice a week, while he was recovering from an injury. He couldn't get over the fact that she drove a nice car and kept saying he must be paying her too much and it's ridiculous that she is driving around the place like that etc. Like he was offended that she wasn't some poor down and out soul that he was helping in a charitable way. It was like her equal status somehow offended him. I was quite appalled and lost a lot of respect of I'm honest.

I think that if some women gain employment as child minders, nannies and cleaners by filling in gaps left by other women not doing so much unpaid work it it is a win for women. Obviously everyone needs to treat each other with respect.

If women don't have paid work and do all their own child care and cleaning then they are totally dependent on men for money. If nine women get office jobs and one woman gets a job cleaning the houses of the others to give them enough time to work in offices then all those women have an independent income stream. It means they can make their own savings, buy their own things, and it will be easier for them to only have relationships with men through choice. This is as true for the woman doing the cleaning as the others.

The thing is... there are hardly any male cleaners, childminders or nursery workers. Now why could that be, one wonders?

Wild stab in the dark time here. Perhaps it has something to do with the work being sheer drudgery and the pay is awful. Most men would not touch that sort of job with a barge pole, but for many women (who have to find part-time roles in order to fit around family commitments), that sort of job is pretty much all that is available.

I think that white goods were a game-changer for women being able to escape from some domestic drudgery. When fridges became popular, you didn't have to shop on a daily (or every other day) basis. Throwing things in the washing machine and dryer is much quicker than doing it by hand, or putting it through a mangle or on the line. Dishwashers are quicker to load than to wash up. Robotic hoovers do a reasonable job of keeping on top of the floors, if you remember to use them daily.

Childcare... well, we wouldn't be able to work if we didn't have someone else to be there for the children when we were unavailable.

Not everyone has a cleaner, but some men are capable of cleaning, and some people actually seem to like it. I would have no problem with paying to support someone's business if I had a cleaner.

Care of the elderly can only be hired out if the elderly person in question agrees to it. I had a grandparent who would put on a show of being perfectly fit and well to get rid of the carers, and would then suffer for it and be grumpy with the family for the rest of the week.

But you probably work 7 or 8 hours per day whereas it's not physically possible for a cleaner to do this

Whereas men work.in physical jobs plumbing, building, labouring for 8 hours plus every day.

Their hourly rates tend to be much higher than rates charged for roles traditionally filled by women. because they are tradesmen who have years of training before qualifying. I recently had a new bathroom put in, there isn't many women who could rip an old bathroom out, carry the new bathroom in up the stairs, carry tiles that are my own body weight, shower doors, heavy toilet and sink and work for 9 hours doing it.

Obviously there are some women doing it, but not many.

What are you on about? There are loads of male cleaners. We have an agency and they send a team of people 2-3 at a time it’s about 50/50 male / female though one is male but appears trans - don’t even want to go there as controversial but I would say male - but certainly not all female.