#domestic work
I said before that I’ll always reblog girls in the kitchen wearing impractical clothes, and I wasn’t kidding. Girls are meant to be domestic and look good - doing both at the same time is perfection.
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Between the wage gap, the domestic work (which includes more than you think), the poorly paid care jobs, and so much more! The amount of unpaid work is huge.
.
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I listened to a podcast on mental workload and unpaid work and it reminded me of a part of Naomi Wolf’s “The beauty myth”: “The economics of industrialized countries would collapse if women didn’t do the work they do for free: According to economist Marilyn Waring, throughout the West it generates between 25 and 40 percent of the gross national product.”
White women need to go to hell for the constant glorification of unpaid labor (being a housewife) like u seriously ignore millions of women who are under abuse and have to depend on their abusers to survive. These women were quite frankly raised to be wives and mothers and nothing else. “I just don’t want to work”. HOUSEWORK IS WORK.
Seriously not enough talk about how housework includes constantly cleaning, doing laundry, cooking dinner, child care,… when upper class white women fantasize about being housewives they also expect someone else to do these labor for them. And funny enough, poor women who have full time jobs as their maids still have to go home and take care of their own house chores and kids :/ white feminism is frankly a fucking joke like can u get any more ignorant :/
When women say shit like that, I want to shake them and yell STOP MAKING YOURSELF INVISIBLE TO THE MEN YOU LIVE WITH AND WORK FOR
Because the work they are doing is on their husbands’/partners’ behalf, so that their men don’t have to do that shit themselves. Unfortunately, too many men are willing to take advantage of that and pretend that they’re the only ones that actually make a difference to the household because the men are the ones with the paying jobs. Add abuse into that, as OP says, and you get a real shitstorm.
My ex used to accuse me to my face of not contributing to the household when I was the one cleaning the house, doing the laundry and grocery shopping and errands, cooking the meals, and taking care of the pets, so that he didn’t have to. I did this often on top of having full-time employment outside the home. And then add in childcare duties on top of that once we had kids. And this, among other things, is why he is my ex.
Housework is work.
Childcare is work.
Unpaid labor is still labor.
Ladies, stop selling yourselves short.
Men, start paying attention to all your partners do for you, and start pulling your own weight in the home.
So here’s something that’s been bothering me lately.
I grew up in a house with traditional gender roles. My father went to work to pay the bills, and my mom was a stay-at-home mother who cooked, cleaned and kissed scraped knees all better. My parents weren’t strict, religious or conservative; my mother simply grew up in an abusive home and wanted a chance to raise her own children with love, and my father was lucky enough to have a high-paying job that could support the whole family. My parents did their best to make sure that my brothers and I learned all the skills we would need in life - all three of us learned how to wash clothes, cook a meal, change a tire and fix a faulty toilet, regardless of gender.
There would be no outdated gender roles in my future relationships, I decided.
My partner, on the other hand, grew up in a different kind of household. His family was ultra-wealthy, and had domestic staff - almost exclusively immigrant women - to take care of any chores that needed doing. His father was working most of the time, and although his mother also worked full-time, it fell on her shoulders to manage the household; she was the one who knew what needed doing, who needed to be paid and when, who needed to be hired, etc. And that made a lasting impression.
Now my partner and I have been living together for almost two years.
My partner considers himself a feminist. He votes for left-wing parties, supports parental leave and a women’s right to choose. He’s all for closing the pay gap, seeing more women in office, and tackling the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women.
And yet it doesn’t dawn on him to do the slightest bit of housework.
When I was in university, we learned about something called “the second shift” in sociology class. Basically, more and more women are working full time jobs and being the breadwinners in their families, but the amount of housework we do per day isn’t decreasing. Women are working a full, eight-hour shift at their paid jobs, and then coming home to do a second, unpaid shift of housework and household management. I remember learning about this and thinking that I’d never stand for that sort of thing in my future relationships. I was going to have a balanced, egalitarian relationship where both of us did equal amounts of housework, goddammit it.
And yet here I am.
My partner might do a couple of household chores, if he’s reminded repeatedly. Take the garbage out. Unload the dishwasher. Clear the table. But without direct instructions, it never dawns on him to do these things. He can walk past a full trash bag or step over a basket of unfolded laundry without blinking. He can put an empty jug of milk back in the fridge, take a single glass from the dishwasher or throw candy wrappers directly on the floor. He’s grown up his whole life seeing women managing the household and doing the chores, and whether he realizes it or not, those things are “women’s work” in his mind. I can argue with him about taking more initiative around the house, but it take a huge amount of energy with little reward. It’s often just less work to do things myself. And he’s not the only one like this - most of my female friends have similar complaints about their husbands/boyfriends.
“What’s the big deal?” he asks, whenever I bring it up. “The chores get done eventually.”
It’s a big deal because the chores get done by me. Or because of me. Every time. I work full-time and do paid freelance writing on top of that, while my partner works part-time. And yet it’s still my responsibility to not only do the brunt of the housework, but keep track of everything that needs to be done. My partner considers himself “helpful” because he does chores on command, sometimes, but he doesn’t recognize the sheer amount of effort that goes into managing the place and keeping track of what needs to be done. Grocery lists. Vet appointments. Scheduling repairs. Making sure there’s clean sheets on the bed, food in the fridge, hygiene products in the bathroom and fresh towels by the shower. Doing all these things costs me tens of hours that I could be devoting to writing, or hobbies, or friends. It’s a cycle we’ve both been socialized into, and it’s proving hard to break.
So to my ladies and femmes: Resist the second shift. Demand more of your partners. Demand time for yourself. Don’t carry that load by yourself.
And to my men and masculines: Be an equal partner in your homes, not an underling who needs to be told what to do. Take initiative, and take pride in the work you do in the home. Remember the burden that women and femmes are still expected to bear. And if you’ve got that down, remind your male/masc friends to be better.
