Should Women be paid to do housework?
I grew up in a very traditional Mexican home. Where the women always stayed home to do the housework and the men went out to work. I saw my mother my whole life just cooking and cleaning and always doing stuff for everyone else. I saw how it took a toll on her and how tried she was by the end of the day. According to The Telegraph, women spend an average of 18 hours or more a week doing housework. That is a lot of hours that consume a woman’s week. Now imagine how many hours that adds up to a year. Now that I am older people expect me to do the same. They expect me to do the housework because I am a girl, but they do not expect my brothers to do the same because they are men. And men simply do not do housework according to my family. I feel like the housework should be done by both men and women. I feel like women should not be the only ones expected to do housework. As a society we should be looking for ways to change the way we view domestic housework.
Some people believe that if we start paying women to do housework this can change the way we view housework and women. In Angela Davis article, “Women, Race, and Class,” she mentions the Wage for Housework Movement which started in Italy. This committee believes that women should be paid to do housework. The committee believes that once we start paying women to do housework it will then end the gender tag of it being “female work.” I do not agree with it. I do not think that just by paying women to do housework will end the notion that housework is for women. It is a lot more complicated than just paying women. You have to think about how the woman feels towards housework. Are women going to be more willing to do housework if they get paid?
Angela Davis says, “Psychological liberation can hardly be achieved simple by paying the housewife a wage.” I agree with Davis because being at home all day doing housework also has a psychological toll on women. Being at home all day can make some people feel like they are going crazy. Davis mentions Myra Ferree who interviewed over a hundred women in a working community near Boston. A woman complained that “staying at home all day is like being in jail. The only realistic escape path from this jail is the search for work outside the home.” So in other words just paying them is not going to help. We need to look for other solutions to get women noticed outside the home.
The United State Department of Labor found that women make up 47 percent of the total U.S. labor force and are projected to account for 51 percent of the increase in total labor force growth between 2008 and 2018. As you can see women make up a large amount of workers in the labor force, but there is also a large amount that is unemployed. Women do not have the same opportunities as men do in the work field and also a lot of women do not hold the position of CEO like most men do. Also women do not make the same amount of money that men do. There is a huge gender pay gap between men and women. We need to push for more women to be out in work field and get them noticed out there. If we get women noticed outside the home people will see that women do not only belong at home doing housework duties. We also need to push for equality between men and women in jobs. When women are given the same opportunity as men when it comes to jobs, there is higher chance of that woman being hired.
Another way to help women leave the home and help them be noticed outside of working at home is by have affordable Childcare. According to the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA), the average cost of center-based daycare in the United States is $11,666 per year. That is a lot of money and not everyone can afford to pay those prices. If a family can’t afford to pay for child care, it most likely falls on the woman to stay home to take care of the kids, while the husband goes out to work.
So instead of focusing on paying women to do housework, let’s focus on getting women noticed for doing things outside the home. Let’s not forget the most important of all and that is that housework is to be done by both women and men. Housework is not just for women.
