Doug Henwood wrote:
>No, I meant women wouldn't be working for pay in large numbers if it
>weren't for the feminist movement. Or would be less likely to be.
Although there's some evidence that it was increased labor force participation by women which spurred on the resurgence of feminism, as well.
>>Well, there might be a certain irony in this result, but I don't think
>>feminism or their feminism or their getting into the field of "social labor"
>>should be targetted for change back to the old ways as a solution to
>>whatever problems there are with feminists employing nannies and
>>housekeepers.
The old way for white folks in the South at least was to hire African American women--this was true to some degree in working class families, even among white textile workers. There was a huge subsidy from racism. For example in my mother's family--white Alabamans--my grandfather, a railroad worker, died in an industrial accident--my grandmother worked as an elementary schoolteacher and hired an African American woman to take care of the kids. How many single public school teachers hire household workers nowadays? Universal kindergarten and much more readily available childcare I would imagine has reduced the individual servant economy considerably (displacing it into childcare, the lowest paid occupation in the country.)
>An angle that Ehrenreich highlights is that nannies and housekeepers
>are forms that imperialism take in everyday life. Their badly paid
>labor has replaced some of the unpaid labor by middle- and
>upper-income women. Bourgeois feminists like Bergmann don't like to
>talk about that (becuase they're bourgeois, not because they're
>feminists, of course).
Of course immigrant labor in general, arriving in the U.S. all raised up, socialized, cared for and educated, represents a huge ripoff of the work of mothers (and public sectors) in their countries of origin. Replacing, one could argue, a higher birth rate here--in which U.S. mothers (or one hopes parents) and the U.S public sector would provide the resources and work.
Jenny Brown