Angela Davis argues that countless chores collectively are referred to as “housework”. Among those are cooking, doing laundry, washing dishes, making beds, sweeping, shopping, and other chores. These types of chores are believed to consume approximately three to four thousand working hours of an average housewife’s year. These statistics are startling even though it concerns house chores alone without taking into account maternity responsibilities. Though years ago both black and white women have these house chores, Angela Davies keeps to the idea that black women experienced far worse treatment not only because of their gender but due to their race as well (“Women, Race, & Class” section 2, page 18). These days, the issue of housework concerns all women equally and irrespective of their race. Angela Davis’ point of argument is that women’s maternal and household duties have never been duly appreciated and are, as a rule, just taken for granted.
A woman goes through an ever-ending toil daily, and it is a rather rare occurrence that she gets appreciation for this. Maybe housework ought to be regarded as being virtually invisible since it is rarely noticed unless it is not done. This is often felt as the unmade bed or the unpolished floor. These are the kind of duties that are generally viewed as being invisible, in most instances repetitive, very exhausting, unproductive, and, unfortunately, uncreative. The result is that these adjectives eventually “perfectly capture the nature of housework” (Davis, 1989).
Therefore, one major question arises out of the above observations. Is there any chance of simultaneously eliminating the idea that housework should be only women’s responsibility and sharing this responsibility between men and women equally? Can this suggestion indeed bring about a satisfactory solution? It is expected that most women will joyously accept the advent of what may result from that assumption “househusband,” but unfortunately, “the desexualization of domestic labor would not alter the oppressive nature of the work” (Davis,
1983) that women experience from the type of work usually attributed to them. The final analysis of this issue concluded that there should be neither women nor men who should waste their time for work that is not even stimulating or productive.
Angela Davis gives her personal experience from the observations she made in Masai in 1973 when she took a jeep trip “across the Masai Plains” (Davies, 1983). (She describes this trip in her book “Women, Race, & Class”, section13, page 224). On an isolated small dirt road in Tanzania, she noticed six Masai women trying to enigmatically balance an enormous heavy board on their bare heads. From the explanations she got, these women were most likely transporting a house roof from one village to a new one which they were suspected to be in the process of putting up. Angela Davis got a rare lesson here about the Masai for whom it is the women who are responsible in nearly all circumstances for all of the domestic activities, among these being the construction and maintenance of their nomadic people’s temporary houses. In this instance, therefore, housework for the Masai women entails not just cooking, cleaning, sewing, and child-rearing but also house-building, a task that a majority of people would naturally expect from their cultural background to be for men. No matter how important “their men’s cattle-raising duties may be, the women’s “housework” is no less productive and no less essential than the economic contributions of Masai men.” (Davis, 1983).
In colonial America, women were responsible only for domestic chores; they were not allowed to take part in their country’s economic activities, especially outside the home. In this period, it was completely acceptable, for example, for a lady to be a tavern keeper. As industrialization advanced, there was a general change in the economic production of women to the factory. Though this may on one side be viewed as progress, the importance of women’s work suffered great systematic erosion domestically. It is thus not disputable here that women were at this point the losers much more in a double sense: first, the traditional jobs that they were accustomed to were usurped by the factories and eventually the entire economy slowly moved away from the norms of home duties thus leaving several women largely without significant economic duties. It was only in the middle of the 20th century that the factories provided textiles jobs for the majority of women. Unfortunately, another blow befell the women since “butter, bread, and other food products [which used to be produced by women at home] began to be mass-produced.” (Davis, 1983).
However, namely, the women who could work were able to struggle with the image of a housewife, as well as with the work of motherhood. Unfortunately, this concerned only white middle-class women who had more succeeded in gaining relative independence. In her book “Women, Race, & Class” Angela Davis addresses this issue (Section13 “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective”). She points out that having a job for women “is a powerful argument for the alleviation of the burden of housework.” (Davis, 1983) The woman who is working gains freedom from the house chores for she has financial independence from her husband; whether or not to become free from motherhood is the choice of her own since only the woman herself can decide which is of more importance for her – being a mother or being a worker. The attempts to balance between these two “occupations” sometimes prove to be unsuccessful, which often results in abandoning one of them. Nevertheless, what remains the fact is that women’s getting jobs and earning money changed the attitude towards them and led to their struggle with the image of a housewife.
It was at this point that the birth of a “housewife” was felt. Women’s roles began to get an ideological redefinition; women started to be referred to as the guardians of domestic life. This kind of redefinition was highly disputed and rejected by a large group of immigrant women that were flooding several working-class ranks, particularly in the Northeast. “These white immigrant women were wage earners first and only secondarily housewives”. (Davies, 1983) On the other side of the economy, there were several other women – millions in number– who worked away from home unwillingly in the South. The place of a woman in the U.S. of the nineteenth century consisted in working at factories for unbelievably small wages; this concerned both black and white women with the only difference that black women were forced to work due to the enslavement, whereas white women chose to work for independence reasons. “The “housewife” reflected a partial reality, for she was a symbol of the economic prosperity enjoyed by the emerging middle-classes.” (Davies, 1989)
The “housewife” perspective, however, remained rooted in the social status of the bourgeoisie as well as middle classes and later on “the nineteenth-century ideology established the housewife and the mother as universal models of womanhood” (Davis, 1983). The popular general view represented various women’s vocations as nothing but a general function of their duties more so in their homes; the eventual result is that those women who felt compelled to work for the wages were much later on treated as mere visitors into the masculine world economy. Since they were viewed as having stepped out of their “natural” sphere, they were not supposed to be treated in any way as full-fledged workers who could get salary. The eventual price they paid for this involved long hours of work, substandard working environment and inadequate wages. Their exploitation in the workforce was more intense as compared to that suffered by the male counterparts. It was at this point that sexism emerged as a vital tool that can be exploited to the maximum for the super-profits gains targeted forth by the capitalists (Davis, 1989).
If this industrial revolution would have resulted in some structural or even virtual separation of home economy from that of the public economy, it would be right not to regard housework as a vital and “integral component of capitalist production” (Davis, 1983). It is on the other hand related to the entire production just as a necessary precondition. This is because the employer is found not to be concerned in any way with the various ways in which labor-power is either produced or even sustained. They are only concerned with whether it is easily available and whether it will generate profit in the long run. It can thus be said that the capitalist production system is one that presupposes an existence of a certain type of body of easily exploitable workers (Davis, 1989).
Angela Davis has also noted racism and the effect it had on gender disparities. South African society is a good example since racism led to economic exploitation all the way down to brutal limits. In this kind of structures, the capitalist economy does betray its separation from the domestic life in a manner that can be regarded as being characteristically violent. The social architects found in the famous apartheid structures Black labor force portrayed as one that does yield greater profits as compared to the whites if the system does succeed in completely discarding their domestic lives. “Black men [were] viewed as labor units whose productive potential render[ed] them valuable to the capitalist class” (Davis, 1983).
In the United States of America, women of color, in particular the Black women, have for long been paid wages just for housework in over several untold decades. World history abounds with the cases when black people were not paid for their work even after the abolishment of slavery. For instance, in 1910 around a half of Black women worked outside their homes, but only one third of this number were paid for being domestic workers. Much has changed over the last decades. By 1920 approximately over one-half worked as domestic servants and later on in 1930s, the fraction had risen to three out of every five (Davis, 1989).
Considering these issues, one may start wondering where women would go if they could leave the confines of their home (some cultures still forbid women leaving their native countries with the purpose of working). It can thus be generally concluded that if the improvement in wages for housework did eventually achieve minimal in providing a basic solution to the centuries’ eternal problem of women’s oppression, then neither will the solution substantively solve the discontent that is felt by a contemporary housewives. It is worth not forgetting that as the world technology and economy greatly advanced, housewives generally became more frustrated with their lives as compared to the previous centuries and thus a need to accept the need to change the perceptions and opinions about the women (Davis, 1983).
Are Lesbians women, by Jacob Hale
Jacob Hail raises an argument that challenges the position of Monique Witting who held that lesbians are not women. Towards this, he develops an articulation that examines who a “woman” is in the contemporary United States and towards this end, he uses 13 defining distinct characteristic to put up his argument.
Though Hale does not agree with Monique, the paper addresses other scholars who have seconded Monique. There are positive reactions towards Monique’s comments and some of them are in reputable academic journals. Witting held on to the view that lesbians ought not to be viewed as women but rather as something else. Hale however does not find her juxtaposition of the various reasons that she puts up the claim to be satisfactory. This view from Hale is because the argument that is put up by witting is one that fails to have a clear border between the truthful claim and a strategic refusal. Though witting uses the view that lesbians are not real women because to be one ought to be ‘real’, her mistake as Hale sees it is that she uses the word “real” in such a manner that it does conform to her own principles. In her explanations of marriage, there is no evidence to show that heterosexual marriage happens to be the only type of relationship that does count as a type of binary relation which can exist between a woman and a man.
The Five Sexes. Why Male And Female Are Not Enough
By Ann Fausto-Sterling
The western culture boldly holds that there are only two true sexes. This is clearly denoted even by the language as it is depicted in this paper. A human being is either referred to as he or she. Also noted is that legally, one is recognized as either being a woman or a man. Ann Fausto-Sterling shows that if the legal systems of the state strongly maintain their stand on the two-party sexual system, then they can only be said to be in complete defiance of the nature. It is however accepted that it is difficult to estimate the intersexuality frequency. The modern advancement in surgical technology and physiology does give the intersexuals a chance to go through the “normal’ development through hormonal and surgical interventions. It is however worth noting that the challenges that the intersexuals face during socialization call forth for better analysis of this issue.
The Five Sexes Revisited By An Fausto-Sterling, 2000
The paper addresses the great question of who is an intersexual and also the concern of how many intersexuals that there could probably be. The paper gives a highlight that approximately 4% of all births at one point eventually turn out to be intersexuals. The idealized, biological and platonic world has that human beings are perfectly dimorphic species and thus the question of where the intersexuals are categorized arises. Nature has proved to be a challenge to the physicians who decide for the newborn intersexuals children as to the type of sex they belong. The paper gives several examples such as of John/Joan who later on refused what the physicians predetermined for him to be a girl but later on turned as an adult who adopted masculinity even without the sexual organs. Some cases of success have been reported but much more is left to be discovered as nature has in several instances disapproved the physicians.
Works Cited
Davis, Angela. Women, Race, & Class. Vintage, 1983.
Davis, Angela. An Autobiography. International Publishers, 1989.