Exploiting women to support yourself

[Felascloak]

This is partly inspired by another thread and partly by an item on immigration I heard on women's hour a couple of weeks ago.
Women returning to work typically the use other people (usually women) to provide childcare, and maybe do cleaning/housekeeping. In some countries, so many women are emigrating to richer western countries to do these jobs that it leaves a care deficit in their home country, causing issues there.
I've read numerous arguments implying that middle class feminists have exploited working class women for their own benefit and this is anti-feminist.
For most women, being able to access childcare/cleaning etc is necessary to allow them to work at all. I also feel that if I was to pay e.g. a cleaner, I would be giving her an income so she wasn't financially dependent on her husband or on benefits. Maybe that's me trying to justify myself though.
I don't know what the answer is. I want to get my thoughts straight on this so wondered what others though?

I agree with everything said by the CatFromJapan

To really get a handle on this, we have to look not just at the interactions of different females. We also have to take into account social class, education, race, religion etc.

There will always be a need for the lower-paid, easier to get into jobs like cleaning, factory work etc. The fact that the lowest paid of these are overwhelmingly female dominated is where the questions need to be asked. Also, when looking back over history, when a job changes from being mainly men to mainly women the wages tend to go down.

I'm sure that the answers are complex and can only be found in hindsight, but a couple of points that I think are valid:

1. Employing someone properly and paying them well isn't the same as exploitation. People can build up a business and make a 'career' out of cleaning, so making sure that the work is valued and treated as a real job is very important.

1. People can have many jobs over the course of their lives. If we make it possible for people to be flexible and move from one job sector to another then there is less chance for exploitation. I did plenty of entry-level 'lowly' jobs when younger, and got into my first 'proper' job at age 25. Making things like education and training easily accessible to people is another important aspect. That's why it's so important to have adult education classes, free/cheap universities and libraries etc.

I like the idea that people can start off in a lower paid job, maybe do further training, get into higher paid positions etc. We need the 'basic' jobs to be done (imagine if we suddenly had no refuse collection). But people also need to be able to move on if they want to. Of course, that then means that many people couldn't afford housing etc until their 30s, which is a whole other problem.

Thewind no I am not sure. The radio item I listened to said the current EU migration was different to other migrations due to larger numbers of female migrants (historically it is usually men). The women were predominantly going to more wealthy EU countries to do childcare/cleaning jobs because that provided more money than professional jobs in their home counties. They interviewed a woman from romania who said she was sad to leave her children behind but hoped the money she earnt would bring them a better life. It could have been a poorly researched news item, I don't know.

*I don't think "the de-gendering of women's work" is advanced by the OP's opening post.

Why is paying a cleaner to do cleaning automatically seen as one woman paying another woman to do women's work.?*

I don't know why.
I wrote my op the way I did because there seems to be an argument out there that middle class / white feminists benefit from using working class/non-white women. I sort of understand why. However as so many have rightly said this equally applies to men. So why is it raised to feminists specifically? As a feminist, what's the "right" thing to do?

I think if traditionally female jobs such as childcare, teaching assistants and cleaners were paid a reasonable living wage then there would no longer be any exploitation. And I would also argue that these jobs are skilled to a certain extent. These jobs need to be done, but it is reasonable to hope that those doing them can live on the wage they are paid.

The point of feminism isn't to try and make all women equal with each other. the point of feminism is to make women equal with their male counterparts. If we want everyone equal with each other that's socialism/communism.

Feminism would want women equal to men whether in socialist, communist, fascist, capitalist etc. economy.

Yes, I benefit from the lower paid women I sub-contract some of my parenting out to (piano teacher, teacher, childcare, cleaner) if you look at it from a purely female point of view., and assume that women are the only ones responsible for women's work.

If you look at it from the pov that women get lumbered with far too much shit work and that men should be doing more of it, then actually it is men who are exploiting the cleaners etc because they should just damn well step up and take on some of the wife work. The fact that their wife is probably the one who organizes the cleaner is just another example of the man side-stepping their responsibility and getting a woman to take care of his shit. (btw, there are many surveys that show getting a cleaner means that the man does less work, and the woman still works and does cleaning)

It's very disingenuous to say that mc women are exploiting wc women, without thinking about how the men should be doing their fucking share!

www.thenation.com/article/after-i-lived-in-norway-america-felt-backward-heres-why/

Just read this, and wondered if anyone could comment on the gender & country of origin of cleaners & childcare assistants in Norway.

Yes.
I think again it points to huge reform needed in working life. Because it isn't possible to manage the demands of children, house cleaning and maintenance, possibly elderly care alonside a full time job (either man or woman). And yes it can be outsourced but then that does just shift the problem.
I think we all need a shorter working week

glitter I coincidentally found this suggesting Norway has a lot of polish migrants
polfamigra.umcs.pl/en/

So much feminist stuff on the Internet is US based and I'm not sure how much extrapolates to the Uak

All I garnered from your OP was how it's women's fault that women are expected to do all child care, cleaning and household management.

I don't sense any recognition that men are in most part responsible for this outsourcing.

For a feminist response, I'd recommend you point out to Dads that they need to step up in parental leave, in organising household and childcare management, and not have all of these essential jobs fall at women's feet.

A flexible working week, shared equally between men and women would revolutionize our patriarchal corporate system.

Corporate work life in it's current form deliberately makes it hard for women to work full time and progress economically. HR departments take one look at a woman in her 30's and a flashing red light goes off with the words "Maternity Leave" so the job goes to a man.

Then women (generally) are left trying to organise a part time job with organising a cleaner, Childminder, gardener etc etc. It's a women's place to have the part time job and manage the home.

Well cleaning to my mind is a skilled job. Just because it is a widely held skill and traditional to women, it is not valued. My cleaner did things three times as fast I can so I paid her more or less the same hourly rate that I get paid for my skilled job.

The problem with the argument advanced in the OP is that it always, implicitly or otherwise, lays the blame on an individual woman returning to work rather than the male partner who isn't staying at home to do childcare and housework or, more widely, a global labour system that perpetrates inequality. This means it will always fail. I'm not blaming you OP, you didn't pick that view up from nowhere, but it's bollocks. It's you, woman should eat a certain and disproportionate amount of shit because vagina, and you refusing to eat that shit means you, rather than the expectation that you should eat more than your share of shit that's the problem. Nope.

In terms of low paid work, it's always worth remembering that people choose the option most advantageous to them. Unless your childminder and cleaner were trafficked or are being exploited in some other way, they're doing what they do because it was the best choice they had available. It may well be the least worst in a banquet of shit options, but they still preferred it to the next gig down. As such, how would you not going back to work or going back but making other arrangements assist them? It's not going to suddenly open up all manner of opportunities. And why are there complaints that better paid women contract out childcare but not that lower paid women pass on some aspects of parenting traditionally falling to the mother such as the teaching and nursing care of children? After all, most people think those professions are underpaid and undervalued. BTW I'm middle income, don't have a cleaner and my childcare comprises male relatives and a preschool I'd use whether I worked or not, so no horse in this race.

"In terms of low paid work, it's always worth remembering that people choose the option most advantageous to them" That's true BonerSibary and I think that is where things are going to get very interesting in the next decade. I can't take for cleaning but there is a rapidly growing recruitment gap in childcare, it's not a job people want to do any more and jobs are being advertised for months and years with no suitable candidates, I can't see it being very long at all before it becomes a significant problem.

Me neither. Seems it already is in some areas.

To expand this point further, I'm reminded of something I read a while ago about how women often end up in the local brothel when a sweatshop closes. That is, you don't do any low paid worker any favours by taking their low paid job away and not replacing it with anything.

slightlyglitter It's 20 years since I lived in Norway, but that article is pretty accurate (most of my family are American and fighting for jobs that include medical insurance).

It is true that many more men work in nurseries and schools than do in the UK, and many more women in every other job than most such jobs in the UK. And working hours are on the whole shorter than in the UK or US. The difference that made them make use of women to solve the labour shortfall problem in the 60s was that back then Norway was a very poor country dependent on the fishing industry and even if they'd had an Empire, no-one would have wanted to move there from it. Whereas even post-war Britain could be made to sound attractive to men from the Caribbean and later Pakistan and Bangladesh. So in the late 80s, apart from a few experts drafted in to help grow the oil industry - which wealth the Norwegians have indeed invested into their country - there were practically no immigrants. And the ones there were couldn't become citizens.

Now Norway has had to accept immigrants in order to trade with the EU, even though it isn't in the EU, and I hear it's changing a fair bit, but they have to have someone nearby to sell electricity and gas and oil to! Though with their mountains and hydroelectric power, they could actually be reasonably self-sufficient if they wanted. I don't know the male:female split of immigrants there but a far right movement blaming immigrants for lcak of jobs and depression of wages sounds the same as such people everywhere.

I always thought the problem was th elow value that the whole of society places on jobs that are traditionally done by women. They arent even seen as work really sometimes just stuff you have a duty to do. Childcare cleaning etc its what we are expected to do for free and if we dont do it for free and pay someone else we are exploiting those people.... ok then. Personally i think we are all being exploited. Its like traditionally masculine jobs are the only 'real' jobs.

That's interesting NotCitrus, and turns the argument the OP was referring to on its head rather.

For most women, being able to access childcare/cleaning etc is necessary to allow them to work at all. I also feel that if I was to pay e.g. a cleaner, I would be giving her an income so she wasn't financially dependent on her husband or on benefits. Maybe that's me trying to justify myself though.

I don't think childcare and cleaning are the main areas where you exploit other women.

Yes, those jobs are paid badly, but I expect you pay your cleaner minimum wage, and childcare will be minimum wage, anyway, if you don't hire a nanny but send your kids to kindergarten.

The really interesting question is, in my opinion, how you exploit women in other countries. In Europe and the US, the standard of living is pretty high for everyone, so even the poorest, most exploited people usually have a roof over their heads and enough to eat.

You need childcare, yes. But do you also need dirt-cheap clothes, and new, fashionable ones every year? Do you need cheap imported food?

There's this essay, in which the author essentially states that the first world worker cannot be classified as "proletariat" : maoistrebelnews.com/2016/05/16/jacobin-magazines-defense-of-the-white-worker-denies-the-reality-of-class/

vestal What about that point upthread that if sweat shops close, then women turn to prostitution? Is a very low paid job better than no job?
Trying to figure out the right thing to do makes my head hurt....

vestal What about that point upthread that if sweat shops close, then women turn to prostitution? Is a very low paid job better than no job?
Trying to figure out the right thing to do makes my head hurt...

Am in a bit of a hurry and can't find that post now, so I'll answer this without reading it, sorry.

What about fair trade? Surely it is possible to pay women in third world countries a wage they can live on decently in their country, even though it is still lower than minimum wages here?

The thing is Vestal, if you have a family here with on a low income, the children need clothes, shoes etc which they need to be able to afford.

If your child grows out of shoes, gym shoes and non-school shoes six weeks before the end of the year, and their trousers don't fit, and your bath waste pipe bursts, all in the same week, and you have enough money left for food budgeted, then actually, you might find yourself in Primark looking for the cheapest way to clothe your child.

That's my life described and I actually am not in a minimum wage job, I get all the ethical arguments, I don't buy new fashions etc, but I am can't see how blaming mostly women for the condition other women work in helps any of us.

The really interesting question is, in my opinion, how you exploit women in other countries. In Europe and the US, the standard of living is pretty high for everyone, so even the poorest, most exploited people usually have a roof over their heads and enough to eat.

The really interesting question is why this is being gendered. All people in the wealthiest countries rely on the exploitation of people of both sexes in the poorest countries. It's not a women exploiting women issue, it's a rich exploiting poor issue. I presume you're not suggesting that whether a woman has a job makes much difference to the level of her participation in this exploitation?

I think Boner, the gendering comes from the fact that women are contracting out or buying in aspects of domestic life, be that cleaning, caring or clothing - in order to participate in the labour market. I mean, I can wear any old rags at home. I cannot do that at work. I cannot send my children to school to learn and get a job without clothes and money to buy these.

The fact that this is all still seen as women's work - and I need to get back to parenting before DC wreck something...

Exactly Boner. All of this was framed in the OP as something middle-class women have special responsibility for. Where is the guilt being attributed to middle-class men for going to work and outsourcing certain household tasks to others? Let's ask ourselves why that's not being presented as a problem in the same way.