>Doing it for Ourselves
>BY BARBARA EHRENREICHr
> In fact, the $15 an hour commonly earned by freelance maids is not so
>generous at all, when you consider that it has to cover cleaning equipment,
although i loved her to death, still do, the biggest feminist (and once very rad marxist) in my community once gushed at a party about how it was so great to hire a maid service. for $10/hr. three women would come to her home and take care of the surface stuff: dust, vacuum, make beds, dishes, whisk toilet bowl, tidy up, etc. that was back in 1995 so i suppose they're making far more now!
i'm sure they didn't mind so much, the women. they got to manage their own business, made about the same as they might have at walmart, etc. and i imagine that is was a "loss leader" through which they gained more lucrative accounts or once per year cleaning contracts.
i was discussant for the work/family session at a conference last year. one of the presenters explored the relationship between higher purchases of convenience items and the decrease in conflict over the second shift and conflict in general. he said something like, "while we seem unable to get men to do more of the second shift, and while they seem to continue to do work that is more flexible than women, one way of approaching the issue is to purchase more of the household tasks. gender conflict between couples is mitigated when they spend more on service labor"
when i pointed out to him in my comments afterwards, that, unfortunately, gender conflict was then displaced into the labor force since so much of that work was borne by low level, poorly paid service workers who were mainly women so "gender conflict and inequality" didn't really go away, he mumbled and fumbled. and i guess this is also what ehrenreich means when she says that there is no such thing as class equality.
also heard another interesting paper on how blue collar men actually shared more of the burden of household task than did their white collar, managerial/professional counterparts. another study, too, showed that men who hit career blocks also tend to become involved fathers who share more of the housework. can't think of the title of that book, though.
kelley
--
"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."
dubya, 1/27/00