well, that's because they work odd hours, spend Saturday cleaning their own abodes, and wait 'til 10 when the kiddles are in bed so they don't have to pay a sitter, just ask a neighbor to keep an eye out. :)
Apparently, someone here argued that po' and working class folk don't get their hair cut or get their nails done. Who said dat?
I agree with Liza that nail salons aren't priced out of the budget ranges of working class women. I wondered if they really made such a great wage--and I'm _really_ troubled by claims that people make a good wage if they're clearing even $15/hr. Why is that "good"?
Also, just a quibble, I don't think that the # of salons by neighborhood is a good indicator to support that argument. Awhile ago, I read a dissertation on the rise of nail salons, gender, and ethnicity. In it the author examined the stats and pointed out that where salons are located are a function of other things: 1. affordability of rents; 2. zoning ordinances; 3. the well-to-do use full service salons, spas, and manicurists who make housecalls. So, counting free-standing salons doesn't always signal that working class women spend more on nails or have them done more frequently. however, this dissertation was about the way in which nail salons blossomed in recent years and that it did so "democratically." LIza's statement reminded me of the diss's careful reading of the stats and their drawbacks.
Jenny mentioned something about women who do manual labor working hard to look as if they don't. When I was getting my hair done Sunday, I listened to my stylist explain the acrylic v. fiberglass nail concept to a man wishing to buy a gift certificate for someone. This was precisely the selling point: "If she works with her hands a lot, her nails probably break and chip a lot right? That's why you get these, they're stronger and that way your real nails can grow and get stronger underneath."
You're soaking in it!
Madge
At 01:05 PM 7/16/03 -0400, jbujes at covad.net wrote:
>I
>now pay a woman $20/hour to come and clean house twice a month. I also
>give her paid
>vacation once a year and a $100 bonus for xmas. She takes 100% of the
>money herself
>and it's tax free, cause she doesn't work for an agency.
You know, this is actually an interesting response because I think it's getting at what Ehrenreich was pointing to, but never articulated particularly well. I was thinking this while getting my hair done. Let me point out, though, Joanna, that I don't think anyone is a bad person for hiring a maid. I don't think one is a bad feminist, either. E's discussion is simply interesting and worth discussing.
The reason why E worries about feminists taking on the employer role here is exemplified by your post. I think she's saying that the nature of the work takes on the worst characteristics of the employer/employee relation. If you think relations of production matter--that they shape consciousness--then this is damaging to feminist solidarity. (Personally, I think there are worse things to worry about... but nonetheless)
As you are probably aware, contractors frequently argue that they must earn at least double what a salaried FT equivalent makes in order to clear the same wages/benefits. A techwriter who contracts asks for $20/hr and this appears to be ~40k/yr. Not really, says the contractor, because I have to pay taxes, provide my own unemployment and disability insurance, buy my own health insurance and save for retirement. And, because it is contract work, I take greater risks, have higher overhead costs, and more administrative costs than an FTE.
Same thing for a maid. She must also pad herself for short time between jobs or spend time always making sure she has new clients lined up (and this extends her working day). Otherwise, there is dead time when she's not working.
Similarly, it takes time to move from client to client each day; that $20/ is stretched over dead time. I don't think that the 5, 10, 30 minutes driving to the next job is accurately called a "break" any more than I think that kindergarten teachers pay is justified b/c they love the work so much that the job is reward in and of itself)
She also has administrative costs in time: taking calls for new clients, interviewing with them, taking calls if a client is unhappy.
If you add all of this up, one shouldn't assume that she's making $20/hr 2040 hrs/yr. It is more like $12.00 and that's not a living wage in your neck o' the woods. (Again, I'm not blaming you b/c most of us don't think this through. It's to our advantage not to do so.)
Paternalism came in the form of thinking a maid should be grateful for the "extras" an employer gave a maid. I don't think any employee on the planet should ever, ever be asked to be grateful for gifts of hand me down clothes and cast off household goods. Those things are fine as far as they go, but... Workers are never, ever paid what their labor is worth to begin with: raises, gifts, bonuses are not gifts.
If a CEO told a union organizer to "Go ahead and tell my employees they're being ripped off, we take care of 'em real swell and they _like_ what they're doing because it's better than punching keypads at the Safeway" what would be the typical lefty response? Applause? I think not.
That's where Ehrenreich's argument didn't go far enough, nor any of the chapters in Global Woman that I've read thus far. But those chapters I have read, have explained the employer/employee relationship in a way that might get at what Ehrenreich experienced and why she came away from that experience down on the idea of feminists hiring maids.
Because it is work you could do yourself but choose not to, you must pay less than you earn in order to make it worth your while. A kind of quasi-capitalist orientation: I pull in this much money, I have this much free time. In order to buy more free time and keep as much of my earnings as possible so I can buy other things, I need to pay a maid less per hour than I make. Very few people are willing to pay as much or more as they earn because it isn't worth it. Some may, but the majority do not. Since it hasn't yet (and probably won't be) understood as work that takes a special talent, there is very little bargaining power. I am not surprised that we end up justifying our decision to do so, by claiming that a maid is happier in her work than she would be were she, say, a manicurist, a cashier, or a barmaid.
As for paternalism. What I was getting at was something that came up while you were gone. I said to Woj at the time that his claims that Whole Foods workers shouldn't fuss so about the anti-unionism of owners because it was better than that they'd face in other industries with a different, less progressive employer. It reminded me of the men in Arlie Hochschild's _Second Shift_ who point to the beer guzzling, wife beater tee shirt wearing, belching guys in the next neighborhood and say, "Hey, I don't do half of the housework, but at least I'm not like HIM." as if you're supposed to be grateful for less than what you deserve.
If feminists are going to concern themselves with the way men try to negotiate more free time to themselves by not picking up their share of the housework, then I can't see why Ehrenreich is so horribly out of line when she points out that feminists who hire maids are doing the same. Again, I'm not saying you should stop hiring a maid.
Just questions I'm curious about: I'm not sure we want to say that someone should make what they make because the cost of reproducing their labor is less than someone else's do we? That is, if a maid doesn't have children, lives by herself, does it follow that she should make less because she doesn't spend as much time cooking and cleaning?
Also, we've been talking about beauty standards so I wonder: How could we mediate the politics involved here under a socialist economy? To say that, fr'instance, pedicures are a kind of obligation to others aesthetic pleasure is a political claim now. It takes on a different, no less political contour in a socialist economy, no?
Kelley