Housework vs Workforce

[Terraarts]

I'm old and Welsh and coming late to the feminist table...
Perhaps somebody can clear this up for me...
When studying economics in school, I learned about so called 'labour saving devices' which were invented and sold to purportedly free women from the 'drudgery of housework'... my teacher said that it was all a big con, because they didn't actually save labour time, all that happened was the expectation of how clean your house should be went up - cue 1950's/60's/70's ➡️ 2020's adverts... so spent just as much time on cleaning. However, once women were taught that they were now freed from the "drudgery of housework" - an idea that has now become an expectation rigorously enforced and endorsed by governments and feminists alike - is it not true, that actually, the "big con" runs a lot deeper? That the majority of women have not only swapped the supposed "drudgery of housework" for the "drudgery" of the workplace, but also still have to... well, how're those "labour saving devices" working out for ya, ladies?

"Oh, but now I can earn my own money"... yep and I'm sure you thank your lucky stars every night for the amazing sense of freedom that gives you... ok, so it's still nowhere near what the average bloke makes and you are compelled to farm out, and pay, raising your children to a third party, (just to compound your amazing sense of freedom and opportunity), but hey, at least you have those "labour saving devices" to rely on to keep your home spick and span 😅

Oh yeah, and in every feminist book I've read where the author talks about "the emancipation of women" in a given country, the benchmark used is always how many women make up that particular country's 'workforce'... and, stupid me, I didn't think that had anything to do with female emancipation and everything to do with capitalism... mind you, going by that benchmark, those Saudi women are definitely living in female emancipation central...

So, thoughts to clear up and explain how I'm wrong headed would be much appreciated and, thank you anyway, for giving me your time to read this far, let alone respond 🙏🏾
✌🏾❣️

Astonishingly I like having choice. My DGM had to stop working when she married and was bored and depressed her whole life. I would be the same. If I’d had to choose work or DC I’d have chosen work. So please take your outdated stereotypes and learn that we’re all individuals with as many needs, wants and ambitions as men and that decent men (like my DH) work with us in partnership doing half of the housework!

Love these women... so, are women, (along with all the other vital, yet financially worthless) demands placed on us, brood mares creating the next generation to feed the voracious and relentless capitalist machine? Perhaps that's the reason birth rates are dropping in so called 'first world' countries... Never underestimate female intuition...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-62980454

There does need to be more credit given to unpaid labour like housework and care, which are predominantly done by women.

Paid caring roles should be paid significantly more, again, predominantly done by women.

I earn the same as my husband, I do the same amount of childcare, same amount of housework. I would not for one second go back, and am eternally grateful to those women who fought so that I could have a career and have my children.

I think you don’t fully comprehend how hard it was to do everyday house chores prior to the labour saving appliances, plus electricity and indoor plumbing. As pointless as you think life is now for women, because we have professional careers and still have to put the laundry on or cook a dinner- in the past it would literally take an entire day to get through what is an evenings worth of laundry while relaxing with the kids after dinner and doing the bedtime routine. Can you imagine hauling water bucket by bucket, heating it up over a coal fire just to wash yourself? Your clothes? Often the eldest girl child did a large amount of housework (no school for girls!) from age 10 or so as mum would be working…until a younger sister could take over and the girl could also start working a job.

Yes cleanliness standards went up, but that wasn’t a bad thing, that was a necessary thing as it reduced the number of deaths due to poor public health and hygiene.

Women didn’t have time to play with their children, they didn’t have time to go to university and have professional careers. Girls couldn’t go to school, because they did a ton of the housework as many women still worked very physically demanding jobs outside the home. These devices freed girks and women.

Society’s need to force someone to do this drudgery is why men made laws forcing girls and women into this life. Most women had to work on top of this…the cotton mills and coal mines women often worked ten hour days, six days a week. They might start a shift an hour later or leave an hour before the men, but you damn well know they did more than 1 hour housework every day! Women worked in bakeries, shops, sweat shops, factories.

Look up what happened to girls making matches- fossy jaw.

I think women have never had it better. It isn’t the best it could be, but let’s not minimise the miserable lives our working class ancestors lived.

'Choice'... Margaret Thatcher's favourite word...

Depression, anxiety, "boredom" etc etc... I expect there's never a dull moment in your life and fill that time so you don't have too much time to think... unlike your poor "bored" mother, who probably felt quite isolated and settled into depression... perhaps an inability to deal with the patriarchal system? Lucky you for your ability to navigate it with a breeze and learn from your mother's 'mistakes'... by the way, who manages what needs to be done in the household, you or your husband? Lucky you again if you have one of those rare proactive ones, definitely a keeper!
Call me old fashioned, but now the work doesn't end when the factory bell rings, for either of you...

My artwork
'Self Portrait' or 'Everywoman', take your pick ✌🏾❣️

Oh, but now I can earn my own money"... yep and I'm sure you thank your lucky stars every night for the amazing sense of freedom that gives you

I do actually, because in the past women had to go out to work and earn money but it wasn’t their money. It was often paid to their husbands, and even if it was handed to them, their husbands fully expected them to give to them and the law would be on their side! The husband had full ownership and control over all money ‘his’ wife made,

Yes many couples would have all pay go to the dad and then dad would give mum back a portion as “housekeeping” allowance for her to buy the family food, clothes, coal and so on. It was infantilising.

His girl children too….many girls went out to service to work as a maid. Where do you think their pay went? To their dad. Some dads would be generous and not ask for all or part of their daughters pay, but dads had the legal right to tell a girl’s employer to send her pay to him as he was their only legal guardian.

We had no full personhood. Now the money we earn is legally ours.

I do actually thank my lucky stars that I was stubborn enough, and allowed to keep working so that when my ex started getting up to all-sorts I had the freedom to tell him to get knotted with no concerns about being able to support myself and my children. That I could take out a credit card/mortgage, that there was no significant stigma.

If I had been my mother, I'd have been stuck in the middle of no-where, no job, no driving license, 4 kids and escape would have been a massively larger challenge.

We're not there yet, but at least we have a fighting chance these days - it's the men that have to catch up to the idea that we have this choice (and women need to do what they can to keep themselves in a position to use it)

Maybe I should have left out the 1950's, it's outside my personal experience, I wasn't quite born 😅** I think you'll find that by that time nearly every household had indoor plumbing... All those new post WW2 houses that were built for the returning soldiers who had served their country... nothing to do with alleviating women from their traditional role of the water carrier from the local pump or standpipe or whatever...

Of course the history of feminism as taught me in school was full of shit... from those lacking in imagination suffragettes fighting for the right to join in a system that was patriarchal, hierarchical, misogynistic, racist, exclusionary, exploitative, colonialist blah blah (democracy, a fuck up when those Greek blokes invented it 1000's of years ago and, despite all that time to practice and perfect...) and how, during WW1 women entered the workplace for the first time and, shock horror, could work as well as blokes, and, the rest is history... Of course women had always worked before that, it's just that that was the moment when capitalism cast its greedy eye on us in earnest... and traditional women's roles such as caring, cleaning etc etc are still valued far less highly, yet if all the hedgefunders disappeared tomorrow, or all the nurses, which would impact society most... Oh, and Belgium went over 2 years without a functioning government, with no appreciable difference, so perhaps I should chuck in that other male bastion too 😆

Government statistics: Average hourly wages between men and women, referencing able bodied and disabled... if you're a disabled woman you're particularly screwed, but if you're an able bodied woman, the average hourly wage for you is still far less than disabled men... and, yep, you guessed it, the gap between able and disabled males is far greater than the small gap between the average hourly rates paid to able and disabled women... funny that...

Yep, modern living is just dandy...
Thank you for your thoughtful response ✌🏾❣️

www.forthwithlife.co.uk/blog/mental-health-statistics-uk/

Sorry, I went back to the 1800s not the 1950s because feminism really took off as a movement in the 1800s. The post WWII homes were built because large swathes of homes had been reduced to rubble by the German bombing campaigns. It was an opportunity to push forward their slum clearance agenda in London too and kick off the gentrification process. It was nothing to do with rewarding veterans! As if.

And you’ve gone to the wage gap…it is far narrower than in those bad old days where women were literally on less pay than a 12 yr old boy. As in less than half the wage of a man. As I said, things are not where they need to be yet, but so much progress has been made.

how, during WW1 women entered the workplace for the first time**

🤣 no, that isn’t true at all. Women were in the workplace for as long as we have had workplaces. They worked the fields when we were feudal serfs, they worked from the home when it was medieval cottage industry and everyone worked from home, they worked in the factories since the start of the Industrial Revolution- many were still working on farms as agricultural workers just like their serf ancestors. Through all these centuries, they also worked as servants in the homes of the rich.

The workplaces that were not open to women until the early 20th c. were the professional ones that required education beyond a bit of primary school. These were the sole preserve of men.

You lost me with the Auschwitz reference. Quite aside from it being in the worst possible taste and a slap in the faces of everyone who lost family members in the Holocaust - was there a single fucking point to it or did you just think it's a pretty picture?

Your photo is very offensive.

Not appropriate.

Agree the photo is not appropriate.

What is your actual point, OP? You seem to be having trouble with the difference between 'improvement' and 'perfection', and to be building it all on a decidedly dodgy 'fact' you were told at school.

If you are saying my options are to be tied to relentless housework drudgery or to a salaried job, i will choose the salaried job. Sure, if i won the lottery Id probaby do neither, but as it stands I would rather exchange my time for money that i can then choose how to spend, than make a tradwife deal with a man and hope he never changes his mind.

And on the whole, as this option becomes more available for women they increasingly select it

In what school of your early feminist learning you’re shouting aggressively about, did you learn that women entered the work force for the first time ?

women have ALWAYS had to work unless they had a wealthy father or husband

a vey bit of proper history of women in workforce tell a very different tale.
here are some gems

• when did women have the most equal pay and working status to men in entire history of England ? During the Black Death. In fact government created new labour laws to stop said uppity women demanding such high wages by being able to move jobs easily to seek higher wages and status. A brief but glorious revolution - bit of a number though as cussed by so much devastation for those same women
• pre Industrial Revolution most women in rural communities worked either as farm hands or in more specialised cottage industries where a skill was required. However Industrial Revolution meant work opportunities for women declined, particularly in the countryside, women's share of household resources dwindled and women's living standards fell dramatically to poverty levels.
• in London during the 1300 (and possibly other places) women could get defined as “femme sole” and be entitled to buy and sell property and hold wealth in their own right as opposed to “femme coverte” which was legal norm meaning fathers or husbands owned property of women. This led to some very wealthy and respected women in trades and guilds
• in 1870-90s one third (33%)of women below age of 25 were in domestic service roles. If you exclude the number of women in upper class households, that means a very much higher % of working class women were in service. Massive numbers. Even quite modest homes had a paid servant girl to do laundry etc. so, even then the drudge of laundry had a labour saving device called a “servant”.

and so on, and so on

yep, for a BRIEF period post world wars middle and lower class women had to abandon working outside the home. They didn’t do so voluntarily. Employers refused to employ married women or those with children . Imho, it’s because of a continuation of a patriarchal message that “decent” “respectable” women shouldn’t want or need to “work” that had been pervading society for years. It was always about status and sod all to do with women’s housework burden . It has to do with men wanting paid employment by RIGHTS, and when jobs become scarce they turf women out. Or men “mystify” simple jobs to make it seem difficult and charge higher wages. I take the examples of “human computers” used my NASA and it’s like for years before rebranding it as “IT” and making it a male dominated and highly paid job, but same can apply to “supply chain “ (women did same thing for years and called it going to the shops- seriously I’m a supply chain expert and the shit over complication and terminology invented by men to justify high salary is gobsmacking . Even the fecking priesthood was winched away form ewrLy Christian deacons and made complicated by men in frocks talking in Latin and charging a “donation”. It was ever thus. Women’s work is defined as “simple” and poorly paid and respected.

Whether women have worked only inside the home or outside the home they’ve always done the lions share of housework and emotional labour and child rearing. It also has sod all to do with the myth of labour saving devices - as others have said expectations on how often clothes were washed, houses cleaned, just increased. FGS some people used to get sewn into their clothes and never take them off for weeks - and the irony of that was it allowed plague to spread which, for that brief period of time, led to employment equality!

now there’s a thought….😉🤣🤣

But, barring us women creating another plague… we still live in a country/world where women are the “default” homemakers and carry the parent penalty. And in turn that continues the wage gap, and makes it harder for us to be valued in same way as men do our contribution. Nothing will change that until MEN decide they need to step up and behave like women. And to take on a half of the domestic tasks and emotional labour without being asked, nagged or to “help” .

a few fine men manage to do this. A few more try and do some of it. But a lot like the status quo just how it is.

By the way, the gem on women’s wages at their highest was during Black Death (or maybe bubonic- can’t re her exact plague) is a gem form Philippa Gregory’s podcast on “normal women “

the one on women rioters is eye opening. Women coudnt get arrested for rioting and really took advantage of it 🤯🥷

link here https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/normal-women/id1711748705

Bearing mind I chose to be a SAHM...

My grandmother did well at school. She not only got into university (in the 1940s)... it was Medical School.

On the day she graduated, my grandfather proposed. She never practised as a Doctor, as she had to support his career.

I'm glad I had the choice.

On the idea that increased hygiene expectations balanced the time saved by devices - between 1900 and 1950 the average amount of time spent by a middle class woman on housework declined from 14 hours a day to 9 hours a day. It's now 2 and a half.

And hygiene and cleanliness expectations didn't so much increase as shift. We wash shirts more often than 100 years ago, but scrub floors less (and less thoroughly). And when was the last time you donkey stoned the front step, blacked the grate, or dismantled your bed to individually dust and polish all the springs?

The message above the gate means "Work will set you free" which is why I suspect the OP used it.

I had family murdered in the holocaust, but I don't find the use of this picture offensive. I believe the OP's trying to make an analogy with its use.....maybe we are being fooled into believing that being able to work/earn money is the thing that will provide female emancipation. There's always certainly a lot of focus on it in historical feminist discussions. It's an interesting argument. Has work set us free, or made women's lives harder?

I think they are harder currently, but that's because women are still tying to work and do everything else. Women still do more housework on average than men, even when both work full-time. I think there is more social pressure on women still to be able to do it all - be successful at work, be good mothers, keep a clean and tidy house, be beautiful and preferably don't age, be a good friend and family member, and if needs be take on caring roles. I think there is a very slow shift, but its slow, and in the meantime, many women are still trying to do it all, while working twice as hard at work to get the same recognition/pay/promotion as men.

I am shamelessly posting a big thank you to all the posters that similarly have read Womens history. I feel like my tribe has arrived on the thread. I have also learned new tidbits- thank you @Dartwarbler for the post on the Black Death (1340s) being the only time so far in British history that women earned equal pay.

Hopefully OP will take on the historical evidence and rethink her views.

Has work set us free, or made women's lives harder?

Have a trundle over to the relationships board and see how many women are stuck in abusive relarionships because they don't work and have no money.

Consider my mother, who worked for an employer who at the time still fired women as soon as they got married. She realised her first marriage was a mistake a few months in, but couldn't leave because her husband wouldn't give her the train fare to go back to her mother.

Money gives freedom and choices. Work is the main source of money. The problems isn't work - it's adding work to all the previous duties and expectations without any societal changes to redistribute or eliminate the other responsibilities and expectations.

I think they are harder currently,

Harder than when? Than the Black Death? Maybe - apart from the everyone dying bit.

Than the 18th century when a married woman had no rights over her property, herself or her children?

Than the 19th century when women worked 16 hours a day in a factory, still had to do all the household chores with heavy manual labour, had no rights to their own money, and could be subject to forcible intimate examination/assault by sanitary inspectors just for being outside unchaperoned?

Harder than ancient Athens, where girls were married off at 13 with no say in the matter, were under the complete control of either a husband or male guardian for their entire lives, and couldn't even have their name mentioned in public?

Do have a listen to Phillippa Gregory’s podcasts- really interesting if you like history and she’s got a nice voice to listen to, and good guest speakers. Really interesting women’s history

I agree with others that the ability to earn money creates freedom which most of our ancestors didn't have.
My grandmother (who was brought up in the 1920s) told me her mother used to take her out of school on a Monday as that was washday and the women of the house would spend all day washing by hand. So she missed out on a day of education for a household chore.
Her mother probably didn't even go to school.
Yes the downside of being able to work in paid employment is that we "have" to work in paid employment, often drudgery, but it's better than the alternative.

The husband had full ownership and control over all money ‘his’ wife made,
Often yes, but I have heard stories (in my own family in the 1950s and others) about how the husband handed over his wage to his wife who managed the finances for the family. I think working class women don't always get the credit for this.

Well, if I hadn't stayed in the workforce, I'd have been well and truly stuffed when my husband decided that drinking himself to death was his next move.

As it was, I could pay my way, have a house I own and live my absolute best life as a single woman with fabulous adult kids and a job I love.

I don't give a shit about how sparkling my house 'should ' be. Anyone who comes in and comments will be told where the exit is.

Aside from that, I am not sure what point you're making.