Is it ever acceptable to hire a cleaner?

[Dances]

The fucking Guardian, where 'sex work is work' calling out women for using cleaners.

God I'm so depressed with these arseholes

mobile.twitter.com/guardian/status/1236572475154223105

Don't families hire cleaners?

Most people I know who have cleaners have kids and work, and time is short to do the house stuff too.

If it's a het couple, why is it seen as the women who is doing this hiring? It comes from the same place as women in het couples often being responsible for the childcare. The men are often invisibilised in this. As it's 'women's work' it's the woman's responsibility and also if there is fault it's hers too. What about childcare, childminders etc. They are usually women and pay can be low. Is that also something the woman should be doing? And it's wrong to outsource? Meanwhile the men tend to be left to carry on with none of the organisation and no newspapers writing articles about how awful they are for doing their best to get by in a place that's centred around paid work, in workplaces designed by men for men, with 'women's work' undervalued and supposed to happen with no complaint and for free (caring, cleaning etc).

This is simply a way to have a go at women for not knowing their place (at home) isn't it.

Agree re gardeners.

Also why do they get paid so much more. Both can be light or heavy, both are a lot of moving stuff around, tidying up essentially. Both are coming to your home. Both are skilled. The only reason cleaning is seen as unskilled by so many, like caring, is because it tends to be women who do it.

Only acceptable if the cleaner is a man! (I do know several men who are professional house cleaners)

The question was about women, so answered thusly, but yes, it should be a family decision (if there is another parent living in the home) - it most often isn't though, in families headed by a heterosexual couple, and of course that needs challenging.

I agree the article itself was trolling women on IWD.

Don't families hire cleaners?

Some will be hired by families , some by single women and some by single men. The Guardian and Janeskettle however only seem interested in pontificating and telling off women.

agree the article itself was trolling women on IWD

Your lofty proclaiming on this is singing from the same hymn sheet.

The only reason cleaning is seen as unskilled by so many, like caring, is because it tends to be women who do it

I don't agree. Being a gardener requires a certain type of expertise and knowledge.

I'm a cleaner and really, the job is not that hard.

You do need to know what products to use of each surface, be able to see dirt/dust and prioritise your work. But everyone can acquire these skills after cleaning for a short while.

The only difficult part about cleaning is cleaning homes/offices that are very very dirty.

I've hired cleaners, baby sitters, nannies and childminders - all women. The only time they were underpaid or had inflexible working was the one time DP got our clean through an agency rather than through personal recommendation.

The rest of the time it's been win-win. The woman got employment that fitted round her other responsibilities (generally kids, sometimes looking after parents too), and I got someone to help out with the things that needed to be done but I was working, and wanted to spend time with my kids when I wasn't rather than clean the house etc.

It's completely feminist to pay a fair wage for fair labour (always above the living wage, always a fair amount of work and great flexibility over how/when it was done - aside from childcare - but even then, the nanny brought her own child, I paid mileage and expenses as well as salary, and if anyone was sick, I still paid).

I have chatted to a woman I know about this question more generally, and her perspective was interesting. She grew up in a country where everyone, including professional women, were expected to do their own housework, hiring a cleaner would have been socially unacceptable

Was everyone expected to do their own housework? Something tells me that professional men weren't.

The thing is janeskettle, it took you several posts to mention all the males who benefit from usually female usually underpaid labour in childcare, cleaning etc. When the issue is framed as middle and upper class women benefitting from poorer labour not middle and upper class people, that betrays a fundamental societal view that actually this is women's work. The penis magically grants immunity, or at least afterthought status. It isn't possible to have a feminist analysis that fails to acknowledge this double standard, and the Guardian article reeks of it too.

To write that article you need to be hardwired into thinking that ensuring the cleaning is done (by yourself, or by outsourcing it) is always the women’s job. Never the man’s. That is the issue we face.

It is. And this is why so often the response to one group of women being disproportionately involved in a particular type of poorly paid or difficult work is that some or all of it should be done by other women instead.

I'm sorry if I'm being stupid but I don't understand. I thought private cleaners, as in the ones who clean homes for families etc, were paid quite well. When I was looking for work recently as I said before I thought about cleaning, I just didn't think my bones could take it. I went for retail instead which pays NMW, less than the cleaning jobs I had seen, and definitely isn't respected if the attitude of a lot of the customers is something to go by. I don't know about industry employed cleaners but they're not the ones we're talking about. I know of a few women near me who've started their own cleaning business where they choose their own clients and hours and fees etc. I thought that sounded pretty cool. Or is the problem that society in general looks down on cleaners?

I’m working class and I don’t know anyone in my family or in my area (council estate) who uses a cleaner or any domestic help. Sometimes you do see food delivery vans from supermarkets as many don’t have cars but that’s about it. People round here do their own cleaning even though they work long hours and have other responsibilities and demands on their time because having a cleaner is just too expensive when you are on a low wage yourself. It doesn’t quite sit right many either although I’m sure many would have one if money was no object.

I did go to a nice university and have some middle class friends and nearly all of them have cleaners and sometimes gardeners. In their circles it seems to be the usual and the going rate is about £10 an hour via an agency (outside London). Most of them have bigger houses which might be a factor although in my observations a smaller house often looks messier and dustier more quickly than a larger home where there is more room for things to spread out. I notice the same or more amount of dust or mess looks better in their house than in my small council house.

Once when staying at a wealthier friends house in London I chatted with their cleaner she was a young woman from Bulgaria and she told me she felt very depressed because to be a cleaner was to be invisible and looked down on in the U.K. she said my friends were nice but that many weren’t so nice and left her very unpleasant things to deal with and that she felt she couldn’t complain. I’ve seen this attitude myself in various work places where people wouldn’t even attempt to tidy after themselves and leave things in a disgusting state while saying “it’s the cleaners job to do that” and would get angry when challenged, I used to just end up doing it myself!

My mum was a cleaner for many years, poorly paid and treated badly. She ended up collapsing when she was only in her mid 30s due to overwork. When she cleaned in hospitals nurses would ask her to clean up geriatric patients who had soiled themselves because they were too busy and would buy her own supplies for cleaning as all the hospitals gave them was dilute washing up liquid, I shit you not.

I agree with a previous poster who said that middle class women getting on in life off the back of poorer women’s labour is a blind spot in many women’s feminism. There are also issues of classism and racism in the mix.

'You do need to know what products to use of each surface, '

Yeah I'm not sure.

If you use the wrong products you risk causing damage possibly £££
You need to not leave floors slippery
You need to not break anything, accidentally Hoover trailing charging leads, take care with any pictures etc
Getting glass clean on Windows without smears isn't something I have mastered!
You need to make sure no chemical residue left in sinks etc

If you cock it up it can be £££ or even a bit dangerous.

Doing things carefully, attention to detail, knowing what to use when etc ARE skills. You have to learn them. They are not innate.

The gardeners round here seem to mainly mow the lawn and blow leaves into the road from private houses (which pisses me off no end)!

I think that these skills are just not recognised as such for various reasons.

'Or is the problem that society in general looks down on cleaners?'

It's related to this and also to women should be doing it themselves ie old school sexism.

Some on this thread seem to think that women should somehow opt out of capitalism and leave it to the men to carry on as usual!

Not sure this is the solution.

Valuing 'women's work', paying properly, society seeing these things as for people to do not women's responsibility, all of this would be good. And how come men, businesses, public services etc are all allowed to hire cleaners but women aren't?

Yes it all needs talking about, framing the lot of low paid women as being the sole fault of higher paid women seems like a large part of the picture is being missed tbh

OPs original point that the graun berate women for hiring cleaners but are in favour of men paying women for sex is worth reiterating.

Men must have whatever they want and women should facilitate that.
Women must know their place. On their backs on a bed or on their knees scrubbing a floor. Righty hi.

I get it, it pisses me off that my husbands idea of clean isn't what mine is he’s a good guy and does do house work but after the dishes are washed and put away he doesn’t seem to see that the sink needs wiped out, or the floor swept, or the hob cleaned he just says to leave it and I’d like to see his face if I actually did just leave it for even a few days!

However my personal struggles with the patriarchy don’t make it ok for me to exploit another woman in perhaps an even more precarious position than me. Let’s face these jobs are looked down on in the U.K, the doctor who pays a cleaner to scrub her toilet bowl probably doesn’t see the cleaner as in the same level value wise as herself.

Have we anything to say about the males who pay cleaners to scrub their toilet bowls, or do their attitudes not require examination?

Some on this thread seem to think that women should somehow opt out of capitalism and leave it to the men to carry on as usual!

There is certainly one poster who seems to think that.

'Or is the problem that society in general looks down on cleaners?'

Is that true? I'm not sure I believe that.

Let’s face these jobs are looked down on in the U.K, the doctor who pays a cleaner to scrub her toilet bowl probably doesn’t see the cleaner as in the same level value wise as herself

Are they looked down on? I've employed domestic help for over 30 years. I don't look down on them. I'm suspicious of this claim. I think it's put forward by those who either (a) resent that some people can afford cleaners or (b) want to put women down for employing cleaners.

Thinking that doctors ought to be on the same level as cleaners, gender aside, is unrealistic though. This is nothing to do with feminism.

However my personal struggles with the patriarchy don’t make it ok for me to exploit another woman in perhaps an even more precarious position than me. Let’s face these jobs are looked down on in the U.K, the doctor who pays a cleaner to scrub her toilet bowl probably doesn’t see the cleaner as in the same level value wise as herself.

I earn less than my cleaner. But I know that if it was left to me the cleaning wouldn't get done. Farcically, I actually worked as a cleaner for a while, and considered paying someone else to do mine for me, as I still didn't do it

I respect my cleaner for doing a job I don't enjoy with a big smile on her face. She doesn't need the money, her H earns decent money, but she's one of those people who gets satisfaction from making things look clean and tidy - my BF's house is a mess and she loves it there

I charge £15 ph for something not hugely skilled and with lots of unbillable hours, which works out at about half that as an hourly rate once I'm done. I'm still more than happy to give my cleaner £12 an hour to do the job she has chosen, and was happy to get £10 an hour for doing it myself previously. I'd rather do that than work in an office or in retail for the same money tbh.

"Have we anything to say about the males who pay cleaners to scrub their toilet bowls, or do their attitudes not require examination?"

This needs reiterating.

So the men can hire a cleaner, have a mum, girlfriend etc to do the cleaning, or the woman they lives with hires a cleaner and this makes her a bad person who exploits women.

His exploitation of women is unexamined and uncommented on, which is just how he likes it, and society supports.

(NAMALT but tbh the vast majority to some extent).