'Womens Work'

[HalloVera]

Why is the traditional 'women's work' no longer considered 'work'? Its not normally done by men (or it would be upgraded very fast!) but is still the lot of women everywhere.

More than ever, it is described as if it were a sort of 'hobby' that people are doing in their spare time and not real work.

Why are single parents on benefits, who look after their own children, not considered to be 'working'? Its incredibly hard work bringing up a family, and considerably cheaper for the government to give income support than pay out huge amounts of subsidised childcare. Especially as few can afford to live on current wages and need topping up anyway.

Looking after your children at home seems to have been downgraded to the same status as 'brushing your teeth' or 'feeding the cat' - something you do when you are not 'working'!

I find this a real insult to women - this brushing aside of all they do, all they have done in the past, and the sacrifices they constantly make for their families to keep them healthy and safe and on the rails.

Or am I missing something?

I find this debate very difficult, even though it has been discussed on MN a million times. So I am not stating any definitive position here, just thoughts.

I am not sure whether looking after children at home historically was ever considered as "work". Except perhaps for professional nannies employed by the very rich. I really struggle to think about a time in history, perhaps with the exception of some kind of rosy picture of the 1950s, when all women did was clean the house, cook and take care of the children. In normal circumstances, poor women will be cleaning, cooking, looking after children, but also tilling the fields, milking cows, feeding livestock, spinning (often on the go), weaving, sewing, making preserves, making baskets, repairing their homes, etc, etc, etc. Rich women would be supervising large households, planning events and doing accounts. So yes, I question the assumed historical normality of our present conception of a SAH parent.

Mind you, questioning the normality is not the same as questioning the desirability. It's none of my business whether people stay at home or not.

I am all for making childcare more affordable to more people because it allows people to become more financially independent. And work is not just money but also a chance to interact with the outside world, to build up skills that may be very useful in the future. Community childcare is also historically normal as children were commonly looked after by people other than the parents (grandparents, older siblings, neigbours, etc) while the women did their milking and tilling and going to market/well.

And yes, I completely agree that the absence of the living wage is a crime.

I also think that the difference between WOH parents and SAH parents is waaay exaggerated. Lots of people move in and out of work. And once children are at School (4 years old in the UK), the difference in childcare hours put in by SAH and WOH parents becomes rather minor.

We should aim to ensure men do as much of it as women. I would object to domestic things being called "women's work". Plenty of women are more than happy to minimise the housecleaning and do something more fun - even work. Let's call it men's work and leave it all to them.

Dh does all that at ours but he doesnt say hes working he says hes off with the children which is true as he isnt working.

I think SAHMs are one of the most maligned sectors of society as if somehow they are lazy for not doing a full-time job as well as all the other stuff women generally end up doing.
I would argue that SAHMs are also helping society by indirectly creating job vacancies.

These are interesting posts but , autumn, childcare was historically at home by relatives, interaction with the world also in local neighbourhood. These can be like ghost towns now!

Just would like to see parenting, mothering, more valued and respected. It's hard work . SAHM can also underpin safe communities.

Not good at typing on iPod !

^I think SAHMs are one of the most maligned sectors of society as if somehow they are lazy for not doing a full-time job as well as all the other stuff women generally end up doing.
I would argue that SAHMs are also helping society by indirectly creating job vacancies.^

I agree.

Personally, I blame the Economists*. Bear with me here - They tend to be really lazy when it comes to applying financial worth to anything that isn't directly related to cold, hard cash. Assessing the economic potential of someone who is paid is easy, you just look at their pay-packet. Once you get out of this and start trying to quantify stuff that doesn't have an easily applied money-value then they start to get a bit skittish. Therefore people who work, but aren't paid are considered not to be "wealth generating" and are written off. Despite allowing other parts of the population to work, despite creating markets themselves, despite producing and rearing offsrping that themselves will contibute to society (and the economy).

It's difficult to ascribe financial worth to such a wide variety of variables and often it has to be a qualitative analyis rather than quantitative which is even more confusing. None of this tallies up very easily with the short-term, capitalist society in which we live.

• Plus most of them are Blokes and have the usual blinkered viewpoints expounded endlessly on FWR.

Apologies, messed up the formatting a bit there. Hope you get the gist.

I read Tim Harford ("Undercover Economist") recently and he was at it too - maligning unpaid contributions and having a crack at SAHPs. Gah, Economists!

I would never call it women's work. Its family work, if that family includes a man it's his bloody work as well. I find it shocking how many of my well educated, self identified feminist friends work yet do all the child care and domestic work as well while their male partners just have their paid work.

I agree that SAHMs aren't valued whatsoever, but that's a slightly different issue I think

I take an issue with the notion that everything has to have an economic value and make a contribution to society. If I was a SAHP, I would not give a rat's arse that I was not "contributing" and instead lying on the couch and painting my nails while my kids were at school, if I was so inclined. I would not be hurting anyone, would I? When did this participation in the hamster wheel become compulsory? Why are we constantly measuring each other up by the amount of martyrdom we undertake?

There are an interesting variety of views as to what 'work' consists of including Autumn's 'chance to interact with the outside world', making meeting a mate for coffee potentially qualifying. Equally, is a stock 'analyst' earning £300k to write about his stock predictions 'working' even when his predictions are as accurate as a monkey throwing darts at the FTSE 100 listing? Is he working because he turns up at an employer and gets paid?

Personally I think the difference between work and a hobby is the fact that you have to do it and, in that sense, a SAHP is definitely working as it is a full on commitment. It becomes a little different, though, when children are in full time school. Then maybe it is more like a part time job.

I think the concept of work, though, is endlessly debatable.

My interpretation is:

Work that is paid and has status = mens work
work that is unpaid and has low status = womens work

We have a family unit where the role of the parents is to provide food, clothes and a roof and care for all members of the family unit.

In a modern society where specialisation has taken root elements of this is done by exchanging labour for goods rather than producing the goods yourself. Some elements continue to be done directly by the family.

There is no earthly reason why you need a gender split in these two ways of providing for and caring for a family. Yet we have one.

Men and women should share the work.

It shoudl be and is shared in most families. Most women work and always have outside the home and most families have always had both parents sometimes relatives, sometimes friends, nannies, child minders nurseries etc helping with children and cleaners helping with cleaning etc etc

If staying home doing all this domestic stuff were so much fun men would be jumping at the chance to do it and the price for those kinds of services would be sky high.

Helpfulchap SAHP are not creating job vacancies, there is not a limited number of jobs in this world that means that one person working denies another a job. If a person works and gets paid for it then they can go and spend that money in ways that creates jobs for other people, whether that is manufacturing jobs (making food, clothing, household goods, luxury goods) or services (hairdressers, cleaners, childcare, personal trainers) or paying taxes (paying taxes to pay doctors, teachers, social workers) Our economy is heavily based on serrvice jobs, we're all working for other people.

This is the basic feminist argument, isn't it?

I agree with autumn that this is not a new thing at all.

My suspicion is that, by defining work that is most done by women as a 'hobby', society gets another way of guilt-tripping women. But that's always been the same. Relatively recently, I believe, archaeologists and anthropologists more or less agreed that in early societies, it's likely the main food source came from gathering, not hunting. Did that mean we've all suddenly started to picture early women gatherers as the 'bread winners'? Not at all. What's happened is we're encouraged to picture both men and women gathering food.

There seems to be no trace of embarrassment that what was once pictured as a nice little hobby for women appears to have been re-interpreted as necessary to the survival of all people - all that was needed was that we re-imagine men at the centre of what used to be pictured as 'women's work'.

Indeed - men and women always worked. Men might hunt meat in some societies and women dig up roots and pick berries. The ridiculous idea that women do nothing but clean and mind children is perhaps a myth perpetuated by sexists who want to keep women in the home and con women into thinking there is something natural and right about 24/7 domestic duties.

Also the work required in the home has evolved over time. Once making your own clothes was part of domestic work. Post-industrialisation it became professionalised and men owned the means of production while women (and children) were the workers. Now making your own clothes has become an expensive hobby for wealthier women.

See also: food & catering, hairdressing, cleaning & laundry services.

The more profit something generates the more likely it is that men will become the primary producers and beneficiaries. How many women work as hairdressers? How many women have branded shampoos named after them?

Also, it is laughable to think that in early silent times women made up a large proportion of film directors and production staff because cinema was considered a lowly art form and men stuck with theatre. As soon as it was clear it would be a mass market profitable industry - the men came.

Oh, god, don't quote me on it.

It's just what I've read. It's probably way more complicated. My mate who is a proper archaeologist sounds off about it quite bit, though.

I am a single parent of 2 boys so they see me doing paid work and the housework. I struggle a bit with this as they are growing up to see me doing all the housework. If I had a partner they'd see him doing the housework too. I worry that when they have their own children they'll see childcare and housework as women's work.

A friend of mine was a SAHM until her daughter declared that she wasn't bothered about her homework as she'd never need to work. Her mother found paid work pronto.

Tbh it has not mattered one jot from paid work to sahm one thing has been constant; if I do it it's not VIP. If a man does the same task that task has value.

My daughters will get better. Won't be letting them put up with any shit! Grrr!