The chapter Maid to Order of Global Women focus was on the work done by the “cleaning ladies.” The chapter goes in detail about the degrading connotation that the words maid and cleaning lady have and how they impact the lives of women who make a living of cleaning homes. This chapter made me feel very guilty because it mentions how housework is most of the time gender specific. Mothers pick up after husbands and their children without them noticing the effort that is put my the mother. The husband and the children get the idea that everything gets made and if they spill something someone is sure to clean it up. My mother recently began to work full time and still comes home to clean the house and our mess. I sometimes leave things dirty knowing that my mother will clean them. My mothers work does not end when she leaves work. I am responsible only for my room and what I make dirty but sometimes I don't do it and my mother will clean it for me.
Another shocking thing that I encountered in the chapter was
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One women even goes to mention that one time she was thirsty that she drank water from the bathroom faucet. Not only is the job of a maid seen as inferior but they are treated like paid slaves. Often times when one mentions a maid the first thought is a women of color who has broken english as mentioned within the chapter. Women who take up these underpaid jobs are often from other countries who do not speak english, are undocumented or have no education. The chapter compares the work done as that completed by sweatshops in undeveloped countries. I find this idea conflicting because we are taught that when you get to the point where someone does work for you such as clean your house, drive you to your destination you have made it in life. Reading this chapter I have learned that success often means putting others under you to support
The paper is on " The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A working-class perspective. From the piece "Women, Race, and Class" written by Angela Y Davis, housework plays a central role in this Angela Y. Davis essay. She explores the idea of capitalist critique and feminism, and she argues that housework is annoying as much as it is disempowering women in the society and women need to be released and discharged from these duties (Angela, 2011). Liberation from this chores and responsibilities can only happen if it is socialized. Black women face a double burden of doing domestic and out of household labor, unlike white women. Angela argues that the stereotype of weaknesses that is substantially associated with women does not apply to black women as they work hard to support both their communities and families. She associates weakness to white women who worked at homes only and never labored for their communities. As a fact some of this house works done by black women was
The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her
In the 1950’s, a woman’s life path was pretty clear cut, graduate from high school and find a good man while your ultimate goal is to start a family and maintain an orderly house. This is shown when Kingston says to the little girl “Some one has to marry you before you can become a housewife.” She says this as if becoming a housewife is a top priority for a woman. However presently, most women in America hold very respectable jobs and the role as housewife is slowly disappearing from American culture. Another example of modern day women showing strength is portrayed when the narrator’s mother goes on a cultural rampage and forces the narrator to go to the drug store and demand a piece of candy simply because the druggist missed the address of the house. This scene is shown in pages three, four, and five. By doing so the narrator comes off as poor and illogical.
Throughout the book, many of the wives note how they wish that they were able to pursue their goals and dreams, but were unable to due to the fact that they had responsibilities as a wife. I think that by putting themselves in a position where they could be viewed as undeserving upper class members who did not work, it not created a dependency to their husbands financially, it portrayed them as women incapable of supporting themselves or their desires in life. “Upper-class women, like other women, experience dissatisfaction with their role as wives–with its expected mode of accommodation, unequal voice in family decisions, and sole responsibility for home and family”
The majority of cultures around the world believe women belong in the household and are responsible for cooking, cleaning, raising children and taking care any and all needs of the man. While fulfilling all these task women are also except to look their best at all times. Being a maid requires the worker to take the roles of cleaning, looking their best as they clean, and in some cases raise the children. Ehrenreich states that maids have to dress “In the most eye-catching elaboration of the home-as-workplace theme”. The typical attire of a maid is a tight, black and white short dress that leaves little to the imagination. In the sixties to seventies, maid service was viewed as the “Great Equalizer” that allowed women to leave the house and work by utilizing the skills they are supposed to know. The Great Equalizer was growing to the extent that in “1973 congressional hearings on whether to extend the Fair Labor Standards Act to household workers”. This hearing would grant maids a minimum wage pay of 7.25 per hour, overtime pay eligibility, record keeping, and child labor standards affecting full-time and part-time workers. Ironically a great counter argument was provided "the demand for household help inside the home will continue to increase as more women seek occupations outside the home." This argument proved very troublesome since it strongly suggests to keep women oppressed by gender standards and maintain the cultural values of the sixties to seventies. Even with this counter argument the act was extended to domestic workers in
This article talks about the growing movement of hiring maids for household work. This article starts off as being about gender inequality, but then turns into an issue of class and moral standards. The author explains her own experiences of house cleaning. She also describes how “wealthier class’s children are being raised with the attitude”. (Barbara Ehrenreich) That the people that clean up after them are “lower” than everyone else. Additionally she talks about how the hiring of house hold workers will increase and eventually move on to the middle class homes.
She appreciates the running water in her shower, “I have paid for it, in fact, I have earned it. I have gotten through a week at The Maids without mishap, injury, or insurrection” (402). The stories from the employees at “The Maids” show strategies on how to get by in our society, but they also show that living as a low wage worker in corporate America means greed, sacrifice, and lack of
Marilynne Robinson does an excellent job of creating different versions of the term housekeeping in this novel. Her characters have lead me to believe that their is not one single definition of what housekeeping is. While all interpretations of the word may not be traditional or appealing to our personal thoughts, this novel allows us to see the trials of women throughout life when faced with the responsibility of maintaining a
Firstly, an African American maid raised white children and had many chores while doing so. An experienced black maid quoted on “History Matters” refers to the amount of work she had to do by saying, “It’s “Mammy, do this, “or “Mammy, do that,” or “Mammy do the other,” from my mistress, all the time.” The maids were required to wash, dress, and feed the children more than three times a day. Somet...
In the novel This Earth Of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, discrimination against social structure, race, and gender is apparent. The setting is in the Indies, or now called Indonesia. At that time, there are terms for different races in the book, which are “Native” indicating someone who is pure Indonesian, “Indo” a half European and half Indonesian, and “Pure Blood” or “European” when someone is pure European. An Indo and a Pure Blood receives more respect in society than a Native. Furthermore, European or Pure Blood is at the top of this social hierarchy, people who are European or Pure Blood receives the utmost respect in society. Differences in gender is prevalent in this novel, where most women in this book have power in their own homes, but in society is looked down upon. Female characters experiencing these are Annelies, the main character’s love interest, Nyai Ontosoroh, Annelies’ mother who is a concubine, and Magda Peters, the main character’s European teacher. Women in this novel are portrayed differently according to what race, social structure, and gender they are born in, which can be seen through Nyai Ontosoroh, Annelies, and Magda Peters.
Enhrenreich notes the immediate problem with the idea of hiring a maid: “to make a mess that another person will have to deal with…is to exert domination in one of its more silent and intimate forms” (Enhrenreich 88). Those who hire a maid service completely disavow responsibility for their own messes, but also, ignore the humanity of those they hire to clean the mess up. Like Marx’s philosophies concerning the alienated laborer, the maid merely becomes an object of their labor. The maids themselves are not what is being sought out, but rather the end result. In fact, the maid loses total control over their ability “after a week or two on the job, [Enhrenreich] found [herself] moving robotlike, grateful to have been relieved of the thinking process.” (Enhrenreich 98). Like Marx says, the worker is alienated from their body, and loses their claim to
One thing my grandma would always say every time she was doing work around the house is that, “A woman’s work is never done.” Posted on an online magazine website author, Jessica Grose, wrote an article titled “Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier,” published March 13th, 2013. As she got into the article she argues that men in our lives more recently started taking on more of the childcare and cooking, while the cleaning still falls unfairly on women. Jessica Grose starts to build her credibility with personal facts and using reputable sources.
Women's status is a complex issue and a hard-to-define subject. Around the world, women's status in each society and culture varies in different ways. In some societies, women's status improved gradually, while in other, it declined or remained unchanged. What affects women's status in a society? In what kind(s) of society, /is women's status /is/ among the highest? And why? My research paper will focus on the relationship between women's status and the degree of stratification and wealth of a society.
More and more women work outside and inside the home. The double demands shouldered by these women pose a threat to their physical health. Whether you are an overworked housewife or an exhausted working mother the chances are that you are always one step behind your schedule. No matter how hard women worked, they never ended up with clean homes. Housewives in these miserable circumstances often became hysterical cleaners. They wore their lives away in an endless round of scouring, scrubbing, and polishing. The increased strain in working women comes from the reality that they carry most of the child-rearing and household responsibilities. According to social trends (1996), women always or usually do the washing in 79 percent of cases and decide the menu 59 percent of the time. Picking up the children at school or doing grocery shopping are just a few of the many typical household-tasks a woman takes on every day.
Gender is defined as the scopes of genetic, physical, mental and behaviour characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and feminity, meanwhile inequality is defined as in a situation where there is an unfair situation or treatment in which certain people have more privileges or better opportunities or chances than other people. Thus, from the definition stated gender inequality refers to unequal or unfair management, treatment, or perceptions of persons or individuals are based on their gender. In a parallel sense, gender inequality can be said as the world in which there was discrimination against anyone based on gender. In this introductory, the general understanding of gender inequalities will be discussed further into three significant factors that influence the allocation of housework between men and women. Household chores can be classified as cleaning, cooking and paying bills. Division of housework serves as an important element in the continuation of the function of a family and it requires contribution from both spouses (Tang, 2012). However, current society’s perception on housework is based on gender, so the three major factors that influence the division of household chores within the couples are education level, economic resources, and time availability (refer to Figure1 in Appendix 1).