Woman Is Not A Robot

“A woman’s work can never be done”.

According to American political activist Angela Davis in Women, Race and Class, she states that a woman is recognized and valued for her maternal duties, but not appreciated for her work around the house. “Housework, after all, is virtually invisible: ‘No one notices it until it isn’t done — we notice the unmade bed, not the scrubbed and polished floor’. Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative — these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework”.

Growing up in an Asian family, I always hear my grandmother and aunts conversation with my uncle that he should find a wife, in old Chinese saying, a woman should be “入得廚房，出得廳堂” in English it means a woman should be both presentable to people and able to cook. Hearing this makes me mad because why cannot man be the same thing? It makes me think, what if a woman looks presentable, but does not cook, does that mean she is unacceptable to become his wife? Why cannot men fulfill the housework task? And if man does the cooking and housework instead of his wife, his mother will scold his daughter-in-law for being a spoiled brat, to other people he will be called a Pussy for not training his wife into a proper housewife. I think that people, men in particular, after marriage, they tend to forget that their so-called “housekeeper” is their significant other. She should be respected and recognized for her hard work and not discriminated against as a “commodity”. Like in this video, The Honeymooner: Ralph and Alice Argue about Mambo.

The whole argument evolves around Ralph asking Alice why she went to dance mambo instead of staying home to do what she is expected to do as a housewife. And in Alice’s case why doesn’t her husband treat her as a woman. Ralph argues, “What do you mean I don’t treat you like a woman? I treat you like a woman. I let you sew, I let you cook, I let you wash the windows, and I let you clean up. Boys don’t do that Alice”. In return Alice says, “That’s right Ralph, that is all the wife is to you, just a handy utensil to have around the house. A wife can cook and slave and clean for you all day long. You never think of saying something pleasant to her”. I just realized that what Alice said is true. We tend to forget to say thank you to our wives, mother, or daughter-in-law for all the hard work she’s done around the house. All we do is just complain when something is not done like “when is dinner ready?” or “where is my dress, why is it still in the dirty clothing pile?” People have to acknowledge that, “housework is not for sissies”. Housework is a type of work that requires a lot of strength and labor. We cannot look down on how simple housework is. If men were to switch roles with their wife would they be able to do housework as detailed as their wife. Since the 20th century, society’s mentality of housework and its association have changed. Nowadays not only do women do the housework, but also men too. I think people start to realize the difficulty in being a housewife and for associating it too only a woman’s task. Family members sharing housework tasks have changed the life of a woman. It somehow removed the burden of housework from an individual woman. While family members, especially the men have started taking on more of the childcare and cooking, cleaning although still falls unfairly on women. In advertisements, we can see that housework-cleaning essentials are directed at women.

In order for women to liberate themselves from housework responsibility, they have to make housework recognizable by the economy. So the economy can acknowledge the domestic value in housework. This issue was reflected in Bryce Covert article titled Putting a Price Tag on Unpaid Housework in Forbes Magazine. The writer argues that housework is same as a job. People should realize the importance of housework in a household because if there were no housework, productivity would be affected in and outside of the home. That unpaid jobs have a huge impact on our economy. We should keep in sight how incredible a housewife is, who is employed outside of the workforce, and is not paid by their economy for what they do.

It should be more like this!