Is having a cleaner exploitation or liberation?

[foreverastudent]

I remember reading in some feminist book a long time ago (maybe GG?) that when rich/middle class women hire poor/working as cleaners they are exploiting them.

I'm not even sure if that quote is accurate but anyway, is it exploitation?

It is if they aren't being paid well or are being treated badly but is it not liberating to create work and financial freedom for someone who can maybe only do this type of work (eg due to childcare)?

Does one (rich) woman's freedom from domestic drudgery come at the expense of another's?

No Dittany cuz I is so stupid I thought feminism was about equality, silly me.

Could you point out a time in history when men didn't undertake the vast majority of domestic work relating to fields, farm animals, machines, plumbing and wiring, heavy yardwork and lawns, etc.

The fact of being female frankly has little to do with whether low paid, low status household duties are exploitation.

Also wrt to the time in history thing, the fact that women may have undertaken the vast majority of domestic work does NOT mean all those women were, or felt, exploited.

I'm single parent so I'm clearly not exploiting anyone by having a cleaner and a gardener (both of whom are paid well above market rates)

egypt- those example aren't domestic

Yes they bloody well are domestic. Are you saying domestic means inside the house only? FFS. Fields. Surrounding house. Barn. Across the yard. Plumbing. Under the sink. Machines. That wash clothing. Lawn, trash out, etc - domestic. Things that relate to the practical tasks of running the household.

Anyway, say I agree, OK, outside the front door is no longer domestic.

My point still stands, just because it occurs inside, doesn't make it exploitation, even if mainly women do it.

It is only exploitation if someone is exploited. The fact that men get use from it, does not make it exploitation of women.

Because otherwise, men going out to work is exploitation of men by mainly women.

It's a weird assumption that it's women who are hiring the cleaners. We had a cleaner. It was lovely. Certainly liberating for us. We paid her a little over the going rate because she was excellent, and she cleaned for us until we left the country (it was one of the things I was sad about on leaving). She cleaned because it worked well around her other commitments, and she also enjoyed it.

Now dh cleans the house. I think he'd quite like a cleaner instead, but we only have the money (and the rationale) for a cleaner if we are both working.

Farm work is not domestic. the dictionary definition in this context is: 'of or pertaining to the home, the household, household affairs, or the family'.

I'm thinking in terms of smallholdings etc.

I'd rather not have to work the "second shift" and dh doesn't much fancy it either so we're getting a cleaner (dh currently does the cleaning and works full time).

No one is being exploited - I will pay the cleaner £10 an hour. The teller in the bank, the barrista in the coffee shop & the librarian who'll serve me this week are all paid significantly less than that. Am I exploiting them too?

sorry op, but its a daft question.

as long as the working conditions and pay are not exploitative - then its the same as arguing that my boss is exploiting me.

When rich (white) middle-class women hire other women to clean (or cook or care) instead of pressurising their DPs to share these tasks they are merely transfering women's oppresion from one female to another.

Isn't the DP who refuses to share the tasks, thus necessitating the cleaner, actually the one transferring women's oppression in this example, though? I don't like the way that this quote seems to put the responsibility for ensuring an equal division of household labour on the woman. If she can't "pressurise" her partner into helping, that's her fault, is it?

I consider myself to have hired our cleaner, because I'm the breadwinner. And the cleaner is male, white, able-bodied, and I gather not actually poor, more that he does this part time after taking early retirement (he's in his fifties), so actually he's got more privilege markers than I do.

I have an accountant who frees me from the drudgery of filing my tax returns.

I have a dentist who frees me from the drudgery of checking my own teeth for cavities.

I have a solicitor who frees me from the drudgery of reading every contract I sign.
DUH

My cleaner is a guy. I pay him well and he cleans well. He frees me from the drudgery of cleaning.

I still wipe my own bum.
That's something I suppose!

Paying anyone to do anything for you is commerce.
Pay the going rate and get the service. Simples.

Anyway, who says cleaning is necessarily drudgery and oppression?

Mm, this is the other thing. I quite like cleaning, although I'm not keen on the delicate dance that is "scrubbing the bathroom whilst entertaining a clingy toddler". But I had friends who cleaned while in university, and almost did so myself.

OP, was the quote you mentioned from an American book? I think it's a bit different over there, cleaners are far more likely to be undocumented immigrants, and thus paid far below a minimum wage.

This is in talk isn't it not the feminist section?

I'm a single mum, work full time, employ a male cleaner, a female gardener twice a year and I'm not exploiting anyone.

No, it's in the Feminism section. Look at the top of the page.

I'm very cheered by all these male cleaners.

I like cleaning too. I find it relaxing, maybe even meditative. It releases a lot of negative energy. I frequently ask DH to take the children out so I can clean properly.

Good point at 00:59 tortoise - finally explains why I've always found that such a skeevy analyisis.

My DP does all the cleaning. I quite like the idea of exploiting him

Definitely not.

Being a cleaner/ housekeeper is just a job like any other. All jobs basically come about because someone has some money and doesn't have the time/ inclination/skill to do whatever it is that needs doing themselves.

In a free market economy, all jobs are paid at "the going rate", being the market rate dictated by supply and demand for that job, subject to minimum wage law. In any case, if you can find a cleaner for less than the min wage in the UK I'd be surprised. Also, bear in mind that cleaning jobs have 2 v. important features that make them quite attractive

1. Flexible hours- most employers dont dictate when in the day the cleaner comes so long as it's done.

1. Tax- most cleaning work gets paid cash in hand- useful if you want to make some money without it affecting benefits.

It's a silly & outdated argument.

Dh & I both work full-time. We both do domestic chores, which neither of us mind, as such, it's just that they take up a disproportionate amount of weekend & evening time.

We have 4 occasional cleaners - they're a band, & originally dh produced an album for them. Since they're all penniless students, they paid in cleaning/babysitting hours.

The album's now finished, but we have one skint muso turn up each week to do a few hours cleaning, which is now paid. They agree between themselves who's most in need of the cash!

& 3 of them are blokes.

So I'll plead guilty to exploiting impoverished students, if you like. Although I did cleaning amongst other McJobs myself when younger, as did dh, & both of us remember it as not as much fun as barwork, but far pleasanter than silver service, telesales, or fruit picking.

Come to think of it, the one girl in the band is a final year medical student whose projected lifetime earnings will certainly eclipse mine.

So no, I don't think domestic cleaning belongs in a special, exploitative category in this day & age, any more than paying someone else to fix your car/mind your kids/replace a burst pipe does.

It doesn't matter who exactly is doing the employing but under the current system people are being exploited; that's what happens in a class system.

If a middle-class woman's job depends on the menial labour of other women then that becomes a problem for feminism , not for society, but just for feminism.

What about single mothers? Even if she does employ someone it means that there's a man out there somewhere not chipping in with the clean-up that involves with raising children. So it's all very well some women like me getting their husbands to do half the work, but not all women can do that.

Housework in itself is unethical because of all the bleaching agents used that are polluting our rivers. So not only does the current system exploit women but it wrecks havoc on the environment

In a free market economy jobs are paid the going rate, but any jobs that women do are automatically devalued because women do them and vice versa.

A worker in macdonalds or on the check out of Tesco is being exploited because the CEOs earn millions off the backs of women's low paid drudgery

SO the fact is you have a huge amount of women in low paid or unpaid labour, and this is a problem. IN most societies women do the jobs that men won't touch.

I dont think jobs are paid less because they are womens' jobs. They are paid less because more people can do them so the potential labour pool is larger, tipping the supply/demand balance.

Generally speaking, the more people that can potentially do Job X, the less Job X is paid.
i.e. surgeons get paid more than postmen.

If you think about "unskilled" jobs that men or women do, many mens' "unskilled" jobs depend on a degree of physical strength which excludes most women, whereas most jobs typically done by women could also be done by men, implying a larger potential labour pool. Eg, as a student I once applied to work on the bins but I couldn't lift the load required (and I am pretty strong for a woman). Therefore I would say that probably 95% of women dont qualify to work on the bins just due to physical restrictions, whereas probably 80% of men could.

However, cleaning is not a particularly badly paid job especially if you take into account that it is mostly paid in cash.I have been a cleaner and it is way better than factory or supermarket work IMO.

If a couple employ a cleaner then the man and the women are avoiding domestic drudgery.

But baggedandtagged, in societies where women fish and men weave the weavers are valued more and the opposite is true in societies where men fish and women weave

"Housework is unethical". Get a grip Sakura, living in filth is unhygienic.