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 🙏🏾
✌🏾❣️

Me neither 🤷🏽‍♀️ One thing I have noticed about all the replies, is the defensiveness... all I wanted was someone to explain how I'm wrong headed as an intellectual exercise... don't get me wrong, I'm with y'all - "whatever gets you through the night"
One world, one love, no borders ✌🏾❣️

The alternative is being chained to a male wage earner and the answer is either stay single or make sure your partner is someone who recognises your equality and pulls his (or her) weight.

Oh, and invest in help and/or even more labour -saving devices like a Roomba.

I'm old and Welsh too. Thank God I had a good education and could escape the misogyny I grew up with.

Thanks, but I can’t focus on podcasts/oral stuff. I have read a lot of her books though- her serious ones that were not the historical romances.

Why do people always do that when thinking of an alternative societal construct? immediately their brains always go to how much worse it could be? The patriarchy invented that fucked up system your female forebears struggled under, yet you now thank your lucky stars for the 'privileges at the table' that same patriarchy has now allowed you... I really don't understand the rationale at all... Stockholm Syndrome? Lack of imagination?
Go on, tell me I'm an idealist, "because in the real world"... I dare you... 😂
"Basically, if you're not an idealist, you're a schmuck"

I think there's a difference between the legal rights women had and their daily arrangements within their family. e.g. - marital rape was legal until the 90s but that doesn't mean all men were raping their wives of course. Legally men might have had control of the family finances but that doesn't mean all men were financially abusing their wives - there are plenty of cases as pp mentioned where the husband handed over his paypacket to his wife. Actually I suspect that might have developed as a "good husband thing to do" as a result of previous cases of men drinking away their paypackets the day they were paid (often in the company bar). That doesn't mean that the previous situations were in any way OK - I want to be in a relationship with a man I trust and who cares for me. I am still extremely grateful that if he abused me/started drinking the family wages etc etc I would have options.

What I'm saying is that just because some peoples parents/grandparents had very happy, loving relationships the lack of legal options for women was OK. You were VERY dependant on someone else's choices.

It’s not how much worse could it be, but how much worse it was within living memory of women alive today.

Raging at how it still sucks is ok. What I took issue with was your initial premise which is that it is as worse as or worse than it has ever been for women. Which is ahistorical nonsense that minimises what our female ancestors- living and dead- lived and the rights, freedoms, and economic, political and professional powers we enjoy that they fought for.

What an unpleasant tone.
Your OP talked about things haven't got better for women - simply swapped the drudgery of housework for the drudgery of workforce work.
I didn't default to how much worse it could be - I genuinely think it is better! We disagree on that, but that's ok.
I'd rather live in 2024 with my option to have a career than 1940 with my pre-ordained (by the patriarchy yes, if you like) housewife role.
That's not to say I think things are perfect, far from it.
I'm completely not getting what you are saying about being an idealist. Over my head, sorry.

Agree with this totally.

I am going to come to the text of your OP soon. But first can i just say how distasteful (disgusting) it is posting that picture to compare the genocide of 6 million people (not to mention the survivors who were in those camps) with household drugery is not on.

I am going to ask MN to remove the picture, but I want to put this here because I'm not afraid of my views.

I am as feminist as they come, and i do have thoughts about your post but no time right now.

Can't believe you actually posted a picture of a concentration camp gate?

I agree with previous OP's your photo is incredibly distasteful, really not appropriate at all.

That aside, I find Ruth Goodman's books really interesting on what day to day life as a woman at various times looked like - her description of the washing for a Victorian farmers wife is astonishing. I'm sure I've read her saying that she believe the invention of the washing machine has done more for women's liberation than the pill!

Tell you what, you may be new to all this feminist stuff, several of us aren't. Far from it. Far far from it.

So instead of criticising posters for "being defensive" imagine how it is to have to constantly outline what the patriarchy is, how women have been discriminated against and just how much work there has been (still is) for women over time and space. And then maybe learn?

And as pp said, maybe have a quick scoot over to Relationships and see just how much of it still goes on.

Another aspect of all this work women have done, of course, is in how history is full of all those great men inventing everything* for decades and we women just want to muscle in and be equal when we are too stupid to invent, paint, discover etc etc. It is enraging. Read Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner for further insight of how the support of women, how women's mundane labour enabled people like Smith, Newton, Marx, all the great men of the past - how it enabled them to concentrate fully on inventing/discovering/painting every bloody thing ever.

As pp pointed out. "computing" was women's work (all that typing! like a secretary!) until men discovered it wasn't like being a secretary. Suddenly women were shut out of the best jobs, best pay, and we know where it all lead.

Adam Smith's mum cooked his dinner (and took care of the household) btw.

*i discovered the other day that a woman - Melitta Benz invented the coffee filter.

According to Godwin's Law you lost your argument in the first post.

I am very sorry to say that i find it absolutely shameful that a) OP used this picture and b) MN didn't see fit to take it down.

It does feminism no good - no matter how new you are to it - to compare it to a genocide. We know women have been opressed and used since the dawn of time. But that was a systematic, planned and documented genocide. What women, as a class, have experienced - and are still experiencing in some places - is completely different.

If I were at home all day every day, I'd earn nothing. As it is, I earn a high salary and really enjoy having the money to do and buy whatever I want, whenever I want - labour-saving devices or no labour saving devices.
I don't have kids (through choice) so my evenings and weekends are very much my own, giving me a sense of freedom despite working full time.
As 2 adults living together, we don't generate much housework - one or two loads of washing a week and a bit of cleaning, and a run around with the hoover.
It's a great balance for me and I feel I'm making the most of the opportunities afforded to my generation of women.

I kind of understand what the op is getting at. If we purely concentrate on here and now, there are still plenty of trapped women.
Many women are in 'traditional' relationships with men who won't lift a finger round the home. Many of them also work. And many of them would like to leave but because they are in lower paid work its a huge mountain to climb.
Not every woman has a career. Not every woman can afford labour saving devices like roombas and dishwashers.
And isn't hiring other women in to help just kicking the can down the road? ( or whatever the saying is) It seems on MN that there's a lot of complaining about cleaners and how much they ( or mainly the companies they work for) charge.
Women in professional work potentially do get choices, but I'm not sure so many choices are there for all.

Melitta Benz invented the coffee filter

And Bertha Benz (nee Ringer) invented brake pads during the first ever long distance drive of an automobile. She also financed and contributed significantly to the invention of that car as a whole, but wasn't legally allowed to be named on the patent.

I’m from a working class family so I have no idea what you mean when you say we work ‘now’. Working class woman have always worked. Not a single generation I can point to in my family featured a woman not working. Where I live, I often hear that the law used to require women to leave payment on marriage. It did - if you were employed by the civil service. The jobs the women in my family did - cleaning, working in a pub/shop/factory - were all fine for married women. My great grandmother ‘retired’ from serving meals in a hospital cafeteria at the age of 79 in the 1970s: she’d had five children whilst working for 65 years.

I also don’t know what you mean when you say working women outsource the raising of our children. As a parent I have a dual role - I’m responsible for their care, and also for paying for their food/clothing/shelter. I’m still raising them. It interests me that nobody says working men aren’t raising their children. Or that people whose children go to school aren’t raising them whilst they’re there.

There is certainly sexism here, but perhaps not exclusively where you’re pointing the finger.

I don’t recognise what you’re saying OP (or understand it really). I have children, a job that earns me c 3x what an ‘average man’ earns, housework takes a few hours per week and DH and I share it (yes he does earn close to the ‘average man’). I don’t feel under pressure to spend hours cleaning my house because of a flash advert or whatever, and if I did I’d paid for a cleaner.

And isn't hiring other women in to help just kicking the can down the road? ( or whatever the saying is) It seems on MN that there's a lot of complaining about cleaners and how much they ( or mainly the companies they work for) charge.

Not really. It is enabling other women who may not be able to earn money independently for whatever reason earn their own money. (because it usually is women) whether that is doing the cleaning, ironing, childminding, gardening etc etc. Whenever i have looked at outsourcing things that i can't (or don't want) to do myself, i have often looked if there is a female owned company or contractor who can do it. Which is how i ended up with a fantastic accountant.

On the face of it, it looks not much different from Edwardian women and girls going into service (my grandma did) but with the difference that (hopefully, as it is in law) they are keeping that money and using it as they see fit, rather than handing it over to a male guardian.

I "outsourced" "care" for my DCs when they were small and i worked full time (as did their Father) to a woman who had 3 children of her own, and found it difficult to work around that, so she set up as a childminder. It was a great arrangement for all of us.

not only that, IIRC, she took the car without permission and just drove off to see if it really would work, had to stop at a pharmacy (!) to get petrol and so on. There are many inventions by women but the Melitta one stuck in my mind because of the coffee filter company of the same name. I guess that's where they got it.

In fact if we look at who worked in time gone by, we really could do a very good class analysis of who was working and who was profiting from that. Except Das Kapital already exists 😀

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'

which books specifically?

As an interesting note, historically a lot of the patriarchal resistance to providing alimony during divorce was based on the idea, that women's traditional domestic labor was just a part of home maintenance, minimizing women's contributions. However, with more and more women entering the formal work sector, the restaurant and fast food industries have really taken off over the past few decades (excluding COVID), because women do not have time to cook. So now society is actually paying for women's traditional work in the household. It kind of throws that argument against alimony out the window.

Just to acknowledge some of the racial dynamics, paid domestic laborers and workers within the restaurant industry are frequently women of color, so there is that dynamic happening as well.

"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'."

Good point. Women's domestic labor needs to be counted.

In feminist critiques of Marxism, Karl Marx has been criticized for being sexist, since he did not account for women's contributions to the economy, based on their domestic labor. I believe the feminist economist addressing this was Hochschild.