Why do folks get all up in arms about such minor things? This article picks out one aspect of Ehrenreich's article and heaps abuse upon her for it, while conveniently disregarding the body of her work (a tactic which is depressingly common). I've read enough Ehrenreich to know that she is definitely in favor of unionization. She's not an Enemy of Labor, as this piece tries to proclaim.
Her focus in her article about maids is simply that rising inequality has undercut some of the solidarity women used to feel since they are less likely to have common experiences. My guess is she's correct.
This is a general point as well, not just limited to feminists or women. ALL people become isolated from each other as class polarization increases.
And of course unionization is one way to combat this trend, and a strategy I bet Ehrenreich would applaud.
In fact, from what I remember of her article, her conclusion was that feminists are guilty of not attacking the problem of class head on, instead being content to worry about breast cancer or sexual harrassment or other issues. Not that these aren't worthy issues, just that the problem of class should have received more attention. And this lack of attention has contributed to the widening class divide which now undermines solidarity among women.
Brett
>> CULTUREBOX
>> Barbara Ehrenreich, Enemy of Labor
>> Judith Shulevitz
>> Posted Wednesday, March 29, 2000, at 8:25 a.m. PT
>>
>>
>> Culturebox hates to dis a fellow journalist, but she has to
>> say it: Barbara Ehrenreich lacks a sense of worker
>> solidarity. How else do you explain the fact that after
>> toiling for three weeks as the employee of a cleaning service
>> in order to write about the experience for Harper's, she
>> issued a call to readers not to hire maids? Having someone
>> else clean your house is bad for you and your children, is
>> her rationale. As she writes in her piece on the cover of the
>> April issue of Harper's:
>>
>> To be cleaned up after is to achieve a certain magical
>> weightlessness and immateriality. Almost everyone complains
>> about violent video games, but paid housecleaning has the
>> same consequence-abolishing effect. ... A servant economy
>> breeds callousness and solipsism in the served, and it does
>> so all the more effectively when the service is performed
>> close up and routinely in the place where they live and
>> reproduce.
>>
>> It may be true that having servants harms your moral character
>> (though it may also not be true--is missing an early meeting
>> because you were washing Johnny's breakfast dishes really an
>> improving experience? How about skipping June's soccer
>> practice because you had to vacuum the living room?). But
>> what about the servants who need the work? Does not having it
>> do good things for their moral characters? Ehrenreich seems
>> to think it does. Working as a maid is worse than not working
>> as a maid, she implies, because cleaning other people's
>> houses is so gross and demeaning. The insults to human
>> dignity range from having to deal with "elaborate dust
>> structures held together by a scaffolding of dog hair" and
>> vomit and urine to relationships with employers that
>> vacillate disturbingly between friendship and exploitation.
>> Ehrenreich also deplores the rise of corporate cleaning
>> services, with all the alienation of labor that they
>> entail--bosses who garnish wages for minor infractions or
>> lateness and the routinization or Taylorization of the work
>> itself. There's less worker autonomy, fewer breaks, and when
>> you work for a company rather than a person, he or she
>> doesn't give you tips.
>>
>> Ehrenreich concedes that there are advantages to signing on
>> with a cleaning agency, such as being protected against
>> abusive or cheating homeowners. But she appears to miss the
>> more important point, which is that there's strength in
>> numbers. If you want to correct the evils of paid domestic
>> work and of corporate cleaning services, doing away with them
>> isn't the answer, since the need to clean is ever with us.
>> The solution is unionizing--which is harder when servants are
>> independent contractors, easier when they are collected
>> together under a single aegis. Under what circumstances do
>> organizing drives tend to succeed? When labor is in demand.
>> So why is Ehrenreich, a good leftist, trying to depress
>> demand?
>>
>> It's her larger feminist agenda. Or so she would say, even
>> though some might construe hers as an anti-feminist agenda.
>> Ehrenreich's real complaint is with middle-class feminists
>> who she says have abandoned the cause of female servants in
>> order to become their employers. So, does she think feminists
>> should have been out organizing maids' unions instead of
>> pursuing white-collar careers? No, although that would have
>> been the logical argument to make. What upsets Ehrenreich is
>> that the middle-class feminists have conceded the fight with
>> their husbands and male lovers over an equitable division of
>> chores. If only they had won, and chores could get done
>> without oppression, class difference, and the master-slave
>> dialectic!
>>
>> Impressed as she is by the character-building qualities of
>> laundering your own socks, Ehrenreich seems not to realize
>> that the reason women quit the battlefield is because, once
>> they had greater earning power (of which she surely wouldn't
>> want to deprive them) they discovered the war wasn't worth
>> waging. Why should anyone have to scrub counters if they
>> don't want to and can afford not to? Or cook, for that
>> matter? Or fix toilets, build cabinets, mow the lawn, or any
>> of the other things we pay people to do in and around our
>> homes? Why should we refuse to hire people who need the
>> money? For more than 40 years, feminists have been demanding
>> that domestic labor be viewed as part of the economy. Now it
>> is, and Ehrenreich worries about our souls. The American
>> economy, she says, is being "Brazilianized"--stratified into
>> "a tiny overclass and a huge underclass." The evidence for
>> this? The fact that, "among my middle-class, professional
>> women friends and acquaintances, including some who made
>> important contributions to the early feminist analysis of
>> housework, the employment of a maid is now nearly universal."
>> But if the ability to hire a maid is trickling down to the
>> lower ranks of the middle class (which is where feminist
>> theorists have traditionally resided) then the American
>> economy is becoming more democratic and fair, not less.
>> Greater numbers of women are getting to do what they want to
>> do, and Ehrenreich wants them to give it up and tend to their
>> homes. Luckily, there's not a chance in hell they'll listen
>> to her.
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