Servants and feminism

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Dec 2 13:04:47 PST 1998


Nathan Newman wrote:


>Home-based services, whether day care, cleaning women or yard work is not
>necessarily an objectionable thing or even necessarily a harbringer of
>Victorianism, but a welcome sign of the success of feminism in reordering
>priorities and responsibilities within the home.

Contracting out for domstic services to poor women, mainly immigrants impoverished by imperialism and structural adjustment, is a triumph of feminism? That's a slander against feminism, and one that will only deepen the suspicions of the Maleckis of this world that it's an irredeemably bourgeois doctrine.

I thought feminism was about, among other things, the de-gendering of work roles, so that in this case, household labor doesn't fall upon women as their birthright. It's progress of a dubious sort if this task is just shifted from wives to maids (who may have their own households and children to tend to).

Yale does seem to be getting to you, Nathan. I remember from my undergrad days all the complaints when the janitors struck that the kids had to clean their own toilets!

Doug



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