The politics of housework

(condensed)

We both had careers, both had to work to earn enough to live on. So why shouldn’t we share the housework? So, I suggested it to my mate and he agreed. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s only fair.”

Then an interesting thing happened. I can only explain it by stating that we women have been brainwashed more than even we can imagine. Probably too many years of seeing television women in ecstasy over shiny waxed floors or breaking down over their dirty shirt collars. Men have no such conditioning. They recognize the essential fact of housework right from the very beginning.

Here’s my list of chores: buying groceries and putting them away; cooking meals and washing dishes; doing the laundry; scrubbing floors. The list could go on but the sheer necessities are bad enough. All of us have to do these things, or get someone else to do them for us.

The longer my husband contemplated these chores, the more repulsed he became, and so proceeded the change from the normally sweet considerate Dr. Jekyll into the crafty Mr. Hyde who would stop at nothing to avoid the horrors of housework. As he felt himself backed into a corner laden with dirty dishes and garbage, his front teeth grew longer and pointer, his fingernails haggled and his eyes grew wild. Housework trivial? Not on your life! Just try to share the burden.

So ensued a dialogue that has been going on for several years. Here are some of the high points:

“I don’t mind sharing the housework, but I don’t do it very well. We should each do the things we’re best at.”

MEANING Unfortunately I’m no good at things like washing dishes or cooking. What I do best is changing light bulbs and moving furniture (how often do you move furniture?)

ALSO MEANING Historically the lower classes (Blacks and women) have had hundreds of years experience doing manual work. It would be a waste of manpower to train someone else to do it now.

ALSO MEANING I don’t like the stupid boring jobs, so you are to do them.

“I don’t mind sharing the work, but you’ll have to show me how to do it!”

MEANING I ask a lot of questions and you’ll have to show me everything every time I do because I don’t remember so well. And I’m going to annoy you until it’s easier to do them yourself.

“We used to be so happy!” (Said whenever it was his turn to do something.)

MEANING I used to be so happy.

ALSO MEANING Life without housework is bliss. Perfect agreement.

“We have different standards, and why do I have to work up to your standards? That’s unfair.”

MEANING If I begin to get bugged by the dirt I will say “This place is a sty” or “How can anyone live like this?” and wait for your reaction. I know that all women have a sore called “Guilt over a messy house”. I know that men have caused that sore – if anyone visits and the place is a sty, they will not say, “He sure is a lousy housekeeper.” You’ll have the rap in any case. I can outwait you.

ALSO MEANING I can provoke innumerable scenes over the housework issue. Eventually doing all the housework yourself will be less painful to you than trying to get me to do a bit. Or I’ll suggest we get a maid. She will do my share of the work. It’s women’s work.

“I’ve got nothing against sharing the housework, but you can’t make me do it on your schedule.”

MEANING Passive resistance. I’ll do it when I please, if at all. If my job is doing dishes, it’s easier to do them once a week. If doing our laundry, once a month. If washing the floors, once a year. If you don’t like it, do it yourself oftener, and then I won’t do it at all.

“I hate it more than you. You don’t mind it so much.”

MEANING Housework is degrading and humiliating for someone of my intelligence to do it. But for someone of your intelligence…

“Housework is too trivial to even talk about.”

MEANING It’s even more trivial to do. Housework is beneath my status. My purpose in life is to deal with matters of significance. Yours is to deal with matters of insignificance. You are to do the housework.

“This problem of housework is not a man-woman problem. In any relationship between two people one will have a stronger personality and dominate.”

MEANING That stronger personality had better be me.

“In animal societies, wolves, for example, the top animal is usually a male, and even there he is not chosen for brutal strength but on the basis of cunning and intelligence. Isn’t that interesting?”

MEANING I have historical, psychological, anthropological and biological justification for keeping you down. How can you ask the top wolf to be equal?

“Women’s Liberation isn’t really a political movement.”

MEANING The Revolution is coming too close to home.

ALSO MEANING I am only interested in how I am oppressed, not how I oppress others. Therefore the war, the draft and the university are political. Women’s Liberation is not.

“Man’s accomplishments have always depended on getting help from other people, mostly women. What a great man would have accomplished what he did if he had to do his own housework?”

MEANING Oppression is built into the system and I as the white American male receive the benefits of this system. I don’t want to give them up.

(by Pat Mainardi http://www.cwluherstory.org.html)

Text 2

BEING A HOUSEHUSBAND

Women’s Liberation invaded my house last year. A few weeks after our first child was born I bought my wife a present – a subscription to the Women’s Lib. Magazine “Spare Rib.” The first issue arrived when the baby was three months old. My wife read the magazine from cover to cover. She was very quiet. When she finished she put it down and stared at me.

“Right,” she said. “I’m going back to work when the baby is twelve months old.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It says in this magazine that women have an equal right to be the breadwinner.”

“I’m the breadwinner,” I reminded her. “We don’t need two.”

“Of course not. You can stay at home and look after the baby.”

Before I could protest, she picked up the telephone and began ringing all the new mothers that she knew. “Chris? Hello! Guess what? I’m going back to work when the baby’s 12 months old.”

She was on the phone for three hours. By the time she’d finished, half of Europe knew of her intentions. That evening the phone rang incessantly. A series of angry husbands shouted at me for causing trouble. All their wives wanted to be breadwinners too. They were stronger than me, however, and said “No!”

My wife finally went back to work when the baby was 15 months old. My first day as a housewife (househusband?) was a disaster, but it began very quietly. I washed and dressed the baby, and we played for a while. Then she got sleepy, and I put her down for a nap. “Now I have two hours to do as I please,” I thought.

I went into the kitchen and made a cup of coffee. I put some bread under the grill to make some toast. Then the telephone rang. I ran to pick it up because I didn’t want the noise to wake the baby. Unfortunately I tripped over some milk bottles and the baby woke up. I picked up the telephone and shouted “Hold on!” Then I ran into the baby’s room and rocked her back to sleep.

I picked up the phone again, but I noticed a horrible smell coming from the kitchen. “The toast!” − I yelled into the phone. I ran into the kitchen. It turned out that the smell was not burnt toast, it was a pair of oven gloves sitting on top of the grill. They were on fire. I threw them on the floor and began jumping on them to put the fire out. The baby woke up again – when I jump up and down, I make a lot of noise. The doorbell rang as I was rocking her back to sleep again. I ran to the phone again. “Can I call you back?” I asked, and put the phone down without waiting for an answer. Then I remembered that I didn’t know who was calling me.

There was a brush salesman at the door. “Go away!” I shouted, and slammed the door in his face. I ran upstairs to check that the baby was asleep and the doorbell rang again. I raced downstairs, opened the door and screamed, “I thought I told you to go to hell!” But it was our friend. I almost began to cry.

He was marvelous. He came in, listened to my explanation and then went into the kitchen. He made me a cup of tea and cleaned up the mess on the floor. He swept up the broken glass from the milk bottles and gave me a cigarette. I smoked and then remembered that I am a non-smoker. I soon felt much better.

After a few days things became easier, but it’s hard work being a housewife. When you think the housework is finished there’s always something else to do. It’s a pity that in schools they don’t teach boys to cook and look after the house, because I am sure many men want to stay at home and let their wives go to work. Society expects women to be housewives, and men must learn the hard way – by experience.

(by Hank Groves)

Text 3

THE US PUBLIC WELFARE

Social policy of the state relates to the maintenance or creation of living conditions that are conducive to human welfare and refers primarily tosocial security concerned with socialprotection, or protection against socially recognized conditions, including poverty, old age, disability, unemployment, families with children and others. In other words, it affects the social conditions under which people live, and specifically, provides public access to social programs: medical care and health insurance, labour regulation and unemployment benefits, pensions, disability insurance, education and others1.

The US public welfare is difficult to define. The majority of Americans (about 85 per cent) belong to the broad economic category regarded as “middle class”, comprising employees, trained professionals and owners of small businesses. Middle class people are generally well off, enough, for example, to pay (at least partly) for their children’s university education. Economically below the middle class is the stratum which is considered to be poor. Thus, by American standards a family of four with an annual income of $12,000 is poor. Many have still a smaller income than this minimal amount. Without a state social security system they wouldn’t be able to earn enough to buy sufficient food and other necessities, to pay for medical treatment and education for their children.

The US Social Security program remains the largest among federal programs aiming to provide financial aid for the needy. It is financed by a tax paid by all working citizens: every person who works has 7 per cent of his or her salary/ wages deducted to support the social (welfare) programs2.

This money is spent in several ways.

When people reach the retirement age (62 at least) they can stop working and receive a monthly Social Security payment. Most Americans don’t retire until after the age of 65, when the payment is slightly higher. This payment is also available to widows and young children of workers who died before the retirement age.

When a worker becomes disabled and cannot work, he or she is eligible for Social Security payments. However, life after retirement usually requires more money than will be paid through the Social Security system. Therefore, Americans try to prepare for these needs by saving a part of their salaries in saving banks.

There are some other federal and state programs designed to help people in need, among them are:

1) Welfare payments – sums of money, given monthly by the government to those whose income is too low to provide necessities such as food, clothing and shelter.

2) AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) – a government program that provides financial support to poor families with children, especially single parents;

3) Medicaid – free medical, including hospital, care. Though this program doesn’t cover all medical expenses, it does help a great deal. On average, it pays about 74% of the money needed for hospital care and about 55% of the money needed for doctors’ fees.

4) Food stamps – books of special stamps which can be used to buy food at any store. Some shops also offer various discounts, you can get a discount when, for example, you buy special offer goods, in a sale, or buy wholesale;

5) Surplus food programs, under which food is purchased in large quantities by the government and distributed free of charge among the needy.

6) School breakfast and lunch programs providing free meals to schoolchildren.

There are also a few benefit programs:

- Unemployment insurance. Each state provides money to workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, or cannot find employment for which they are suited. The government supplies a short-term compensation (from 20 up to 39 weeks depending on economic conditions) which the unemployed receive weekly while they look for a new job. These payments, which replace wages lost between jobs, vary from state to state, and federal money also used to supplement the payments. About 80% of all wage and salary earners are covered by unemployment insurance. In addition, both the government and private industry working people get some other benefits from the companies they work for or labor union they belong to. These benefits can include free or low-cost medical care or life insurance. Many companies have retirement and profit sharing plans. Some pay the workers a small amount of money if they lose their jobs.

- Education. All children are entitled to get a completely free education at public schools for up to 12 years, ending when the young person is 17 or 18 years old. Higher education at college or university is not free in most cases, but all states operate educational institutions where the cost of education is much lower than that at private colleges. Young people who qualify because their family’s income is low can get low-interest loans and grants under government programs. Loans must be repaid when the student starts working after graduation.

- Job training. This government program helps both adults and children from poor families and minority groups to learn certain skills which will get them a good job. The program is specially designed to help children with talent in mechanics, arts, or some trade.

- Business. There are certain government agencies which give aid to people who run a business, by providing them with subsidies and loans.

- Veteran’s benefits. Persons who have served in the armed forces can receive inexpensive or cost-free hospital care at special veteran’s medical centers. The

wounded or disabled servicemen are entitled to receive pensions.

In addition to aid from the public welfare system funded through taxation and administered by the federal or local government, Americans can also receive help from a broad spectrum of private charities and voluntary organizations. The three major organizations funded by business and industry – the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation – have provided tens of millions to programs for teacher education, development of science and improvement of public administration. American companies have allocated over $50 billion to the promotion of the public welfare system in the past 25 years.

On a smaller scale, 55% of all American adults do some form of volunteer work, donating a total of 84 billion hours to the public welfare each year. On average, each American also donates 1.8% of his income to charity. Their donations support colleges and universities, hospitals and orphanages, homes for the blind and aged. Both business firms and individuals may record the amounts of their contributions to charity and, thus, decrease their tax obligations.

The development of the state social security system gave rise to the concept of a welfare state. This concept is interpreted not only in terms of state provision of certain welfare services, but also as an ideal model in which the state assumes primary responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. This responsibility is comprehensive, because all aspects of welfare are considered; a "safety net" is not enough, nor are minimum standards. It is universal, because it covers every person.

In many "welfare states", especially in continental Europe, welfare is not actually provided by the state, but by a combination of independent, voluntary, mutualist and government services. The functional provider of benefits and services may be a central or state government, a state-sponsored company or agency, a private corporation, a charity or another form of non-profit organization.

However, the concept of a welfare state remains controversial, and there is continuing debate over governments’ responsibility for their citizens’ well-being.

Welfare state advocates proceed from the basic assumption that people should not suffer unnecessarily. This humanitarian idea is usually facilitated by a more utilitarian one – the same amount of money will produce more happiness if given to a poor person than if given to a rich person; thus, the simple act of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor will increase the total happiness in society.

Furthermore, social programs not only provide well-being of society by promoting objectives related to education, family and work, but also perform a range of economic functions, including e.g. the regulation of demand and structuring the labour market. This can be viewed as a kind of insurance against social disturbances and political crises.

Apart from that, a welfare state is thought to be based on universal moral principles. Altruism and charity are thought to be moral in many cultures. Moreover, the major world religions emphasize the importance of generosity towards other people. They also favour solidarity and social organization rather than personal development alone. (It’s noteworthy that several national systems have developed voluntarily through the growth of mutual insurance.)

However, there are a lot of people who criticize the concept of a welfare state. Thus, “libertarians” of various kinds will argue that the governmental practice of supporting people is a method of controlling those people, rather than an act of altruism. They believe that state intervention infringes individual freedom, and that the individual should not be forced to subsidize the consumption of others.

Conservatives, on the other hand, claim that social spending has undesirable effects on people’s behavior, fostering dependency and reducing incentives to work, when welfare pays at much the same rate as the minimum wage. They also point out that social spending reduces the freedom of wealthy individuals by transferring some of their wealth to others.

Advocates of the free market believe that it leads to more efficient and effective production and service delivery than state-run welfare programs. They argue that social spending is costly and requires high taxes. They also accuse the welfare system of greater state control over businesses, stifling economic growth and creating unemployment.

Some Protestant Christians are opposed to a welfare state since they believe it compels people to be generous; they argue that only voluntary giving through private charities is virtuous. On top of this, governmental institutions are unable, they claim, to collect knowledge to respond to specific circumstances as efficiently as individuals can.

The idea of a welfare state receives the most criticism from the country with the least amount of welfare services in the developed world – the United States. Some of this criticism concerns the idea that a welfare state makes citizens lazy and less inclined to work, a theory which some conservatives claim is proved by the current economic and social situation in France. The point is that the welfare system often provides its dependents with an income tantamount to the minimum wage, encouraging benefit fraud and economic inactivity, especially common now in the UK. Some conservatives in the UK claim that the welfare state has produced a generation of dependents who rely solely upon the state for income and support instead of working. They believe that a welfare state was created to provide a carefully selected number of people with a subsistence level of benefits in order to relieve poverty, but that it has been overly expanded to provide a large number of people indiscriminately with more money than the country can afford.

In this connection, there has arisen the derogatory term ‘welfarism’ to denote a way of life in which a person does not work but accepts money from the government and does not want this situation to change. This word is used by people who think that there are too many government welfare programs. However, many younger people in the United States are worried that the existing welfare system will not help them when they become old or disabled. Much of the money collected by Social Security has already been spent, so younger people worry that all of the money will be used within the next forty or fifty years1.

Another criticism of a welfare state is the belief that welfare services provided by the state are less efficient than the same services would be if provided by private businesses. In a welfare state, the poor and lower-middle classes receive certain services free of charge, whereas in non-welfare states they would have to pay for those services, and could possibly not be able to afford them.

(compiled from http://en.wikipedia.org.)

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