Hi Joanna, > Why, it would be the truth. The man who fixes a car or paints a room or > shovels the snow is equally unpaid and also contributes to the wealth of > the household.
If I counted out and priced all the voluntary work, or unpaid work I have done in my life, I would be unaffordable. A mathematician recently argued with me that we should assert the "pricelessness of human labour" or human creativity, i.e. it is impossible to correctly price human work, and indeed damages human beings. A slightly utopian viewpoint maybe, but that was because the mathematician failed to understand the question which Marx sought to answer, namely why or how is it that a market price gets to be attached to human work capacity, so that human work acquires an abstracted, objectified economic value, on the basis of which regulating prices develop for human work capacity, which are the basis for the wages structure ? Notice how peculiar this price is as well, because it may not include the work involved in travel to and from work, the work involved in dressing for work, the work involved in eating and drinking at work, and so on, this work is somehow not part of the deal. A very specific costing is involved. Only that part of the worker's work is paid for, which directly benefits the employer, but the work which must be performed in order to this work for an employer and is presupposed by it, is not paid. At the same time, bourgeois economics denies the absolutely central role of human work in the allocation of scarce resources. For some astonishing data about all this, see http://www.newint.org/issue181/facts.htm >It's not quite clear to me > why women wind up doing most if not all of the housework. Quite possibly > it has nothing to do with the fact that they earn less. But if Shaw is > right in noting that money is society's way of telling you how much it > loves you, then this is a possibility. The wife earns less, therefore > she is less important and her time and energy may be claimed in a > disproportionate way. I suggest a multi-variable explanation of that. (1) a tendential primeval, biological or genetic disposition - notice how women preen themselves, even unconsciously, are capable of giving birth, and have a special fascination with "making a home" and adornment, just as men have a special fascination about occupying a home territory or constructing one. (2) socialisation from childhood - it installs values, habits/customs and behavioural repertoires which usually (though not necessarily) correspond to the gendered role of female adults and male adults which is perceived to be "normal" or "necessary" at the time. (3) objective practical necessity arising from the kind of economic and bioenergetic relations I have referred to. (4) power relationships between men and women based property ownership, social position, physical/psychological strength and characteristics, etc. (5) gender differences in the modalities for the expression of love, affection, care, identity and social solidarity, and related psychological factors, i.e. the specifically gendered dimension of giving and getting, receiving and taking. (6) status and class differences which attach to the valuation of different tasks in the division of labour, which shape the pattern of cooperation and relationship culture between men and women. That would, abstractly speaking, be the main factors involved I would think. This topic is looked at anthropologically and historically by Stephanie Coontz & Peta Henderson, Women's Work, Men's Property (Verso). > > Some years ago, when I worked for a large, multinational computer > company, I sent out an email to everyone in the company asking why men > don't do housework. I was amazed by the torrent of email that came back. > A handful of men said they "helped," but for the most part responses > came from working women who wrote despairingly of their situation. I'm > very sorry I didn't keep those emails. Well, as mentioned earlier, some like to work inside and some like to work outside. > Cheaper food is not necessarily better food. I read this anecdote once > about a doctor who, when making housecalls, always went and shook the > cook's hand first for giving him good business. If you eat crap, you'll > save on food costs (maybe) but possibly see the doctor more often than > those who eat healthily. I don't know if that is good or bad, but anyway it is not true and more a middleclass or bourgeois prejudice. > > I think it is impossible to measure the worth of the work women > contribute to a household. Yes, women often argue this to bolster their bargaining position and justify the value of what they do, and you are correct also from an economic point of view because it is difficult or impossible to impute a non-arbitrary price, and quite soon the value which is attached to it is influenced by the broader exchange relations within with housework is enmeshed. But you are also wrong, because of course we can measure with a high degree of accuracy what it would cost, if all household labour was purchased in the market. The problem however is that then we must answer the question of what determines the regulating price for commercial household labour, i.e. the value of this labour-power in Marx's sense ? In a given situation, the value may be higher or lower, depending on the magnitude of supply and the level of monetarily effective demand for it, as governed by the disposable income of householders, and the relationship with other salaries, the definition of what is "skilled" and "unskilled" work and so on. > Well then, I'd say that measuring household wealth in these terms > doesn't tell us much. It tells us only about wealth expressible in money prices, that is all, but this can indirectly tell us a lot about non-monetary wealth as well. > > > That's not the only reason. It is indescribably exhausting to be a > mother 24/7; and it doesn't necessarily make you into a better mother. > Moreover, children need to be with other children and with other adults, > so there are many more reasons for having some kind of community-based > child care then that the mother has to work. Yes but the exhaustion of mother is paralelled by the exhaustion of father, and being objective means being able to consider the question from a vantage point which transcends gender bias. It is not necessarily true that kids "need to be with other kids or other adults", that need is formed through a social relation, and that social relation is circumstantial and historically relative, not purely natural. But I agree there are many reasons for community-based childcare. However bourgeois urbanisation is not very conducive to forming genuine communities, never mind community-based childcare - people often do not even know who lives next door, and the community tends to be more an "imagined community" more than anything else, an object for political rhetoric or sexual speculation. > > > I never argued for wages for housework. I am arguing for a > non-quantitative examination of the problem. I am suggesting it is an > economic issue as much as a social issue and that it would be wonderful > if we could come up with a way of describing the intersection of those > two realms. To make a quantitative examination of the problem, you necessarily have to define and refer to measurable qualities which can constitute measurement units, and therefore a quantitative examination contains qualities already, which vulgar minds forget. It is just that, as shown by phenomenological inquiry for instance, some qualities are just not measurable, or only imperfectly measurable by virtue of the instrinsic characteristics of those qualities. Therefore the easiest thing to do when the quantitative examination does not support your case, is to argue that there are qualities involved not amenable to quantitative measurements, and that anyhow no absolutely accurate measurements exist. But that is the easy way out. There is in fact a large amount of writing on housework, and Marxian analysis facilitates that "intersection". Some Marxian or semi-Marxian analyses I found specifically helpful in thinking through the issues two decades ago were: - Stephanie Coontz & Peta Henderson, Women's Work, Men's Property (Verso). - Bonnie Fox (ed.), Hidden in the Household: Women's Domestic Labour Under Capitalism (Toronto, 1980) - Meg Luxton, More Than a Labour of Love : Three Generations of Women's Work in the Home (reprinted 1987) - Ellen Malos (ed.), The Politics of Housework (1980) - Various books by Ann Oakley Luxton's study is especially interesting, insofar as it involves both multidimensional theorising, participant observation, quantitative data and a look at relationships between the household and other worksites within a Canadian mining town. Jurriaan
