My wife and I ( a man) both worked full time. No kids. But even without kids some of the domestic didn’t happen because we were so busy with capitalism. I ended up leaving my job for various reasons, but have discovered a love for domestic life. I do all the housework, cooking, taking care of pets and running errands. My wife works outside the home. As a man I never thought domestic work would appeal to me but I am actually perfectly suited to it. Since we don’t have kids I continue to do odd jobs to make a little money, but we have found this nontraditional, slower life works extremely well for both of us. We’ve never been happier (or more broke).
The same happened with my wife and me (also a man)! Capitalism pays her good but doesn't seem to like me near as much, so instead of wasting my time at work I take care of the house and pets. At first it felt weird, but after some years it's pretty normal now.
The capp..ist rat race robs all of our time to do really important things. Most jobs are BS and not only pointless, but actively make society and lives worse for working class people.
Another type of unpaid work that fits well into this framework (and is done mostly by working class women) is care for the elderly and people with severe disabilities.
While it does make absolute sense for assistive care to be supported by social programs (no question, I'm all for it), the "payment" for caring for others yourself is "not having to pay others to do it". If we start thinking along the lines that any thing we do ourselves is "unpaid work" the conversation can get a bit crazy... like if I spend 2 hours listening to a friend, is that "unpaid psychology work", or if I pick up the groceries in a store, am I an "unpaid delivery worker"? Again, absolutely agree with social programs supporting assistive care, it's just that conceptually this is not really the right way to look at it, in my opinion. A much better result can be achieved by framing it as a social issue (providing assistive care takes time and effort which means less time for paid activities, therefore social support is warranted), while contextualizing it as a "work/wage issue" doesn't do it much good.
I think it's important that Ballerina Farm looks like a housewife, but she's running a few businesses between her social media, their cattle products, and the homemaking tools. My read of the article was very much about how odd it is that she's the face of all of that while not seeming to have much say in the big decisions - she does the labor to support whatever decisions are made by her husband, the manager. It definitely could have done a better job of framing her as part of the labor force, but I thought the critiques of her work environment seemed fair. In general, though, I agree that we need to advocate for support (including financial!) of people who do domestic work. I think the same issue of devaluing "women's work" also affects nursing and education, since both are seen as care-work and something women should just "naturally" do.
Paid maternity leave is great. But _mandatory_ paternity leave could be a good idea too. This would make the job field less unequal, especially for positions with a very high salary. In countries that have paid paternity leave, it's usually optional. A company will take into consideration that a job candidate who won't give birth is likely to not take paternity leave, or that paternity leave is much shorter than maternity leave, and favour that candidate.
Maybe this would also force companies to actually hire temporary workers when someone goes on maternity or paternity leave. And also hire enough staff so that when parents continually ask for time off because of their kid, it doesn't feel like everyone else is stuck picking up their slack. Because unless society has some radical changes and forces workplaces to make those changes, it's never going to feel fair for a parent who actually takes time off for their kids (as they should; why have kids if you won't take care of them?) to get a promotion over a non-parent.
I like the idea of paying for domestic work. The major problem I had with tradwife influencers is that they are essentially women with money, power, and choice cosplaying as women who in real life often have little or no power, money, and choice. Paying domestic work will go a ways to give stay at home mothers some level of power and control over their lives, even if just a little.
Especially whenever you see footage of their "household" work, everything is extremely neat, beautiful and sort of "sanitized". Almost as if dirty rags, spills, slips, breakage or any mess cannot possibly exist in this "household cosplay universe."
It seems it's not really about that, there doesn't seem to be the expectation this would actually happen or at least it's not meant as a practical solution. (video points that out) I agree with what's it's trying to achieve, but in practice this would be insanely complicated to regulate and administer, insanely expensive to maintain, and open to all kinds of loopholes. Can you even imagine how to manage a program like this? Who would be eligible? How much to pay? How to make sure the money actually goes to the domestic worker? How to make sure people aren't still working anyway? How to make sure people don't just quit their jobs? Absolute chaos :P And even if it COULD be properly implemented, it would totally miss the point: IF it's backed by a social institution then it would just be seen as welfare, which would completely miss the point of being seen as work in the context of capitalism. If backed by other members of the household, it would be seen as allowance, which again, misses the point. Anyway, like Alice said, it clearly has it's set of problems, and proponents are well aware. It just makes more sense to address more fundamental issues, rather than seeing this as an actual solution.
Just in case it's helpful: "family planning" is actually a euphemism for contraception, rather than meaning managing the family's calendar! But great video essay and UBI now!
I brought up the uncompensated domestic labor when I lived in a housemate situation with two men. They laughed and said they didn't value that kind of work and got along just fine with a dirty home before I moved in. So I quit doing the work again. It was disgusting, I feel like I should have been paid to live that long without doing dishes or letting trash fill up and overflow. When I couldn't stand it anymore I went back to cleaning, for my OWN sanity and ability to use the kitchen. These guys were toxic and used that to say it came "naturally" to me to be more clean. I just don't like maggots growing in my dish sink, is all.
Nah wtf. As a man, that mindset boggles my mind. How can you live like that? I'm fine if things aren't organized, but piles of garbage and dirty dishes is a no-no🙅🏽♂️
I lived with a female roommate who acted the same, and my guy friend complained that he was the only one who felt the need to clean in his house with other male roommates. Its not necessarily gendered, but in domestic cases with "traditional" gender roles it most often is the woman doing most if not all the work.
That happened to me to with my brother a long time ago. He finally learned his lesson when he had to move as a part of the military and I wasn’t around anymore to be his maid. 🤦🏽♀️ (for the record I still love him and we get along great.)
I may be a jerk, but...if they're fine with a dirty home, and you're the only one who's not, I really don't see why they should pay/compensate for somethink they did not ask. Regardless of gender, and even if they benefit from it at the end. At the end of the day, you clean if you want your house clean, and you don't if you don't care. I don't see where money comes into play.
@@alioshax7797 I get what you’re saying, but a lot of times when people say they’re fine living in filth. What they’re really saying is they’re fine waiting till someone else cleans up the mess. I highly doubt they were truly ok living in filth. Otherwise they wouldn’t have told OP that she does it better than them which signals that they see value in her labor, they’re just too lazy to do it themselves. So, yes, OP should’ve been compensated, but it doesn’t work like that, and it was best to just leave imo.
Yes, I think it should be a paid position and that's what conservatives ought to be in favor of if they really want their "traditional family" to be economically viable. But of course, they really don't because, as you mention, this would lead to recognizing it as work and having to negotiate a fair wage. They want women in that role because it's "in their nature." Interesting video as always, Alice! Hope you are well!
But it should be paid by the husband, together with the pension and disability insurance and savings account. That's not something the government should pay. They get the wife, they pay for it.
“If they really want their "traditional family" to be economically viable” Except… it was without that? The fact you had single income households among the lower classes (a factory worker for example) that could actually support a family is proof of that. That it’s practically an impossibility now should be the real debate, and beg the question of what on earth we’re doing wrong to deteriorate economically to the extent we have.
@@Valentina.Montano Exactly women who complain they should be paid for it should complain to their own husbands. And actually if he is their traditional husband in daily life and not just in the marriage contract... his money should be her money too. So women who think they need to be paid already got screwed by their partner. Most women do housework including the working mums or the single women even teenagers and some kids do housework et home that is part of life there is no need to paid for that. Unless in your household with your husband you agreed to leave your job to stay at home. Then it's the couple's responsibility to think about how to adjust to that. Women who choose stay at home don't contribute more to society they just contribute differently so they don't deserve more than others except from their own husband/partner. I don't even understand why there is debate when it comes to this.
let's start talking about guys doing their homework when people live alone, they do everything themselves, but for some reason when they get together, everything goes to a woman, it's absurd
Behavioural economics, like it or not, explains the phenomenon quite well. Orion Tarraban makes a bunch of videos on the topic, he even has a book, you may find what he says abhorrent (I certainly do to an extent) but he’s not wrong. Also, side note, if you do watch his content, he is not a misogynist, he has a video telling men that women are “not the sundae” (the means to a fulfilling and meaningful life) and that men shouldn’t expect that of them, it’s not fair for the women (which it really isn’t), figured I’d just mention that.
No, it isn't. He makes the money and she takes care of the interior of the house and cooking. Employees work for their employers for pay. Wives work for resources and the marital act. Husbands work for services AND the marital act.
My ex insisted on gatekeeping housework because she was a perfectionist. Once I gave up on struggling with her to carry my own weight, she got resentful over it. Her traumas and my depression didn't help. That being said, too many men become lazy shlubs in long term relationships or marriage.
In the Netherlands this lead to a more common alternative, common in the sense for both sexes. It's called Basisloon, which translates as 'basic wages'. It is just a bit above welfare but below minimum wages. The idea behind is was that by means of this badic wages EVERYONE was well provided for, above poverty level but had still incentive enough to want a normal paid for job. And welfare? Not needed anymore. But... that was the 80s. Since then we went more liberal and more hard kapitalism, so the idea evaporated all together. The idea of a socalled household wages (yep, for the tradwifes) more or less survived, shrunken to an embrionic form. I believe there had been some short time experiments with both basic wages and housewife wages. Never be heard of again.
Domestic labour with kids is full time job 365/7/24. The fair salary will be too high, that's why the society, men especially, prefers not to see and understand.
Thank you Alice for this video. I learned a lot and especially liked the idea that wages for domestic labour aim mainly to make that labour *visbile* and heavy on the system (and I see the limitations of this idea too) I have a solution for the issue discussed in this video that I want to humbly share. Instead of paying the man as a full time employee enough to outsource the domestic labour to the wife , employing structures should guarantee to every employee 2 things : livable wage + *time* to take care of their own fair share of domestic labour. In this configuration both partners would work less (maybe half a day) and then get back home and contribute the the housework and to their community as well. I suggest this because I observe that it's not uncommon today for families where both the mother and the father work paid jobs to tangibly struggle with the housechores, cooking, child care, etc...This shows that domestic work is a *third full time job* and not just a side activity. For physically draining jobs, it's almost impossible for the person to contribute to the housework, so it kinda obliges the family to adapt by allocating housework to women who are primed with their socialization to accept this. Many tradwives who might not be satisfied with this partition, are comfronted with the fact that their husband's job does not make it realistic for him to contribute, and in economically struggling areas those physically draining jobs are all what's available and they are destined for men. My analysis is at the intersection of feminism and general pro labour rights ideas I feel. Flexible jobs that don't reduce as to producing entities and don't come at the expense of our community life will solve a lot of things.
We had a whole discussion on this topic only recently in India where there was some discourse around homemakers being remunerated. That along with domestic workers (caste, religion and gender play a major role) still not getting their due.
There is a reason that fertility rates are dropping rapidly as women become equal workers. Although my partner shares equally in the housework (or more), and we have all the mod cons like robot vacuum cleaner and dishwasher etc, there are still many days of the week when the house is a mess because we're both too tired from work to do anything but order take-away. When both parents work, 40 hour work weeks is too much to also take care of a child, EVEN IF said child goes to daycare for the same hours we work. For many people-- especially women-- it becomes a choice bewteen parenthood and a career. I am reducing my hours to 20 hours a week and hopefully that will allow me to start thinking about producing the next generation of worker... but I am aware that I am in a priviledged position to be able to choose to work so little and not be laid off amd/or face financial hardship.
one thing that the 'wages against housework' argument seems to neglect, based on this brief summary you've given, is the vital necessity of housework. i don't believe that opting out of the work is a real solution, is even really possible. *someone* needs to do the work of caring for the home and for children, and not for capitalism's sake but for the sake of life and humanity at its core. if it's not housewives or househusbands, then it's domestic workers (maids, babysitters, etc.). the duties of feeding, clothing, emotionally supporting, educating children are *life-giving*, to the child and the caregiver. i believe everyone should be able to live a comfortable life, with their basic needs met, and housewives being paid for their work would be a good step in that direction. to my mind, UBI (universal basic income) is the solution that covers the diverse bases you discuss at the end of all the work of social reproduction that isn't directly involved in creating capital.
Maybe it's because I'm familiar with this topic already, but I got that from her video as well. She was saying that the family and thus reproductive work are the bedrock of any productive system like capitalism. From a policy side, I think UBI wouldn't be the right choice, because it's too expensive, has a bad rep, and wouldn't make the reproductive side transparent enough. I think literally a wage for housework would be the best choice. But since no one 'clocks in' for housework, it could be simply paid for the average hours of housework (while considering number of children, etc)
UBI could be a good first step, but I definitely do not think it can be the solution. Since EVERYONE benefits from UBI, housewives will not benefit from it to the extent that their working partner does; the working partner gets their salary AND their UBI, whereas the housewife only gets the UBI and nothing else. That is definitely better than the housewife receiving no money whatsoever, but does still leave a lot to be desired in terms of actually leveling the playing field.
I say we should pay tradwives. We should give power back to tradwives, especially to women who are poor. Domestic work is always incredibly hard. I know because I had to help take care of my nieces! I don't want to imagine having to take care of my nieces all alone like my mom and sister had.
On the third angle of Bhattacharya: The JD Vance video segment is actually a perfect example. They expect others (family, especially grandparents) to take up the care of children, so the parents can work. It's almost as if the workforce/parents are being upheld as the most important members of society, and all the other (nonwage-working) members of society are purely a supportive class for them (this role is perhaps only surpassed by the role as consumer)
This explains why countries are worried about fertility rates because they base the economy on populations (future workers/consumers) to continue performing the same tasks. Its sounds interconnected.
They’re worried about fertility because they can’t just print money to pay for senior citizens. That’s literally it, seniors are an economic burden, paid for by the youth, no youth, no capital, no capital, you need to print more, you print more, inflation, inflation = big problems, ergo, how do you solve the problem? Import workers and encourage fertility, ideally the first one, since it’s cheaper to get migrants who are working age, you don’t need to educate them and they’re uninformed of their rights for an extended period of time, and they tend to try being their families over too. Fundamentally it’s a problem that can’t be fixed, most governments that grace this earth do not care for the welfare of their citizens, nor will they even if it was in their best interests.
@@sulimanthemagnificent4893 This is too shallow to be an explanation. If you have a shrinking population you end up raising less taxes to pay for your welfare state, it's not just greedy people holding onto power, you actually have to cut your aid the poorest in society because the state has less money. Not only that, a shrinking population leads to a shriking economy, less job opportunities, no pay raises and/or higher unenployment. You don't really want that for your country because, as always, it's the poor that end up paying the bill.
I may be projecting my own ideas onto the topic, but I feel like a big takeaway here is that “Should we pay tradwives?” isn’t really the question we should be asking. It reinforces gender roles and the idea of exchanging labor for money, suggesting we uphold a system where inequity and class disparity thrive.
Reminder that Nara Smith is NOT a tradwife, shes a model and an influencer and she gets paid by high end brands for her content. Hannah on the other hand comes from an extremely religious backround and her husband def wouldnt want her to receive an income as a homemaker, that would be an insult to him as a provider and a christian husband. Just mentioning this bc you picked these two women for the thumbnail...
Love a good deep dive into feminist theory. I would add that another angle to look at domestic work is through queer relationships because it challenges traditional gender roles as well. My partner and I are both queer and trans. We have 2 elementary age kids. I'm a trans man and I work a typically masculine job doing manual labour. My partner is non-binary and a teacher. Because I start work early in the morning I get home around midday and I take care of most of the house work. When my partner and kids come home in the evening we cook dinner and take care of the kids together. Growing up I watched my mum do everything for my dad and for my sister and I. And since I was sociallized to learn so called women's work, I learned how to clean and take care of a space. Now that I'm in my thirties and see cis men my age that can't perform simple household tasks, I find domestic skills to be extremely valuable.
A balanced summary. So much goes unsaid in the context of expectations, I feel. In a system that attempts to appraise and quantify all work and production, little value is attributed to those who possess the power to maintain and replenish the status quo. Why does the traditional family model depend on reinforcing a dominant-submissive power dynamic? Thought provoking as ever. Thank you Alice!
I’m glad you finally arrived at the conclusion that housework should be socialized. This isn’t new. Angela Davis brought this up as an idea in her book _Women, Race_ and Class_ . We discussed that part of the book in my DSA reading group. I said it was a good idea, one that could break out of the gendered role that housework typically takes and instead potentially becomes a public sector job that everyone can do. It could work in a real-world situation. For example, the UK’s National Health Service could provide social workers and cleaners for people struggling with postpartum or severe depression, hoarding, long-term disability, recovery from surgery, or just need someone to come by on a weekly basis to help clean the house. Rather than look at this issue as a debate, maybe look at it as a collective conversation among a group of people who may not call themselves academics, activists, or even feminists (I do but not everyone does) coming together to advocate for better alternatives. Deconstruction is helpful. It helps us understand the current conditions we are living under. But people get stuck here because the work of reconstruction requires imagination, trust, and responsibility. But I believe when it comes to reconstruction, it is a group activity. We don’t have to figure it out alone.
Beautiful job Alice! Nothing is all black or white in your videos because there’s so much nuance in life 👏 and now my hard opinion on this: Being a mom is probably the hardest job (if you care about raising your kids) I personally didn’t value moms as much before but after becoming one, I realize we did a terrible deal with men with the feminist movement. Or at least an incomplete job. Male born men don’t breastfeed and babies need their moms in a different way. The problem with feminism is that we gave away our rights to be moms and to be able to work under our terms. We are moms and have to work under men’s terms. Nowadays we glorify everything that relieves parents from parenting, for example: convincing our generation that daycare is just as good as parenting the first three years of a kid’s life. When we know the data differs
Another story - my male partner a few years ago worked from home and got domestic beneifts for anyone living in his household. He had me and a male friend. He declined to let us use these benefits even though it's very rare and sought after to have a job even offer help to your household without needing to be married or anything. He said it would feel too much like paying a housekeeper, to let me be on his work healthcare policy. Again ... i was his PARTNER and the other guy was his lifelong best friend. Benefits liek that don't come with most jobs here. Don't worry I realized this dude was an abuser in other ways and left in 2018.
Domestic labour is work. Important work. Work that deserves to be paid. Paying the tradwives is actually pretty radical - because it acknowledges the value of that work while also granting a degree of financial independence to the people performing it, which helps to mitigate the exploitative nature of the tradwive movement.
It is a good solution in the same way UBI is a good solution: it improves working people’s lives but keeps the broken system relatively the same. So it is a good policy to support, not to advocate for. The real solution is to make living free. This means free basic food, free housing, free healthcare etc. Alongside that, we need to communitise and raise children communally. But I agree that as long as it costs money to live, houseworkers should get paid.
Exactly right, we can work within the system to improve living conditions in the short term, while also working to dismantle the system in the long term through activism and advocacy. Too many people see it as an either/or, and I think that really holds things back.
I disagree. I think it's a good policy to advocate for, because we're not going to have a global revolution in our lifetimes that will fix all the world's problems. Yes, I will continue to organize and work in a way that will bring us closer to the communist utopian dream, but I will definitely also advocate for the policies that can make our lives better HERE AND NOW.
@@Sina-dv1eg I don't think the other solutions are much of a utopia. Free healthcare already exists in many countries. Housing first programs are free housing. Maybe they get a different branding, but I think universal basic needs will be implemented before UBI
Love the introspection and movement forward. It's easy to get stuck in the nitpicking of how individual trends are wrong, rather than moving on to solutions that could discourage that bad behavior in the first place. Thanks for exposing us to these ideas. You are our French Feminist Guru 😅
This was a good video. I'm glad you're kind of moving past the same old "men bad" rhetoric and focusing on "how the fuck do we fix those broken social dynamics?" Yes, being a housewife means renouncing your power, your time and your agency for the well-being of your partner, children, and your relatives too. That's a vulnerable position to be in. And that was never an option for women, until recently. Now that it IS an option, in developed countries at least, I wonder how many women would trade their career opportunities for a basic "housework" income? I work in the healthcare field, and based on the women I know, I'd say: none of them. This is probably a good enough solution for women who couldn't get an education or a job for cultural/economic reasons, but when faced with the choice between a basic income for doing housework and an opportunity for a higher-paying career, most women would probably choose the latter. Before we could even discuss the concept of a basic housework income, we have to take a deep, hard look at how being a stay-at-home whatever under the system we live in is becoming less and less desirable or even feasible at all.
I agree with this. Most people would not trade their $30+/hr job for minimum wage doing housework and child rearing where they get no benefits, PTO, or scheduled breaks. On top of that, I don’t think even trad-wives would even accept a wage cuz their husbands are the ones who are expected to pay for everything. The tea-life is a gamble and often is not in favor of women, but we all have to make choices and accept the consequences of them. That’s why women usually choose to work for a bit or get a degree before becoming trad or a SAHM to offset the cons should things get bad. Giving them a wage is far to giving imo cuz those same considerations aren’t being given to women who pursue a career. I short housework will never be seen as legitimate over work in a capitalistic society, so people need to be smart about their decisions.
I think youre confusing neutrality as a sort of politics with neutrality as an attempt to be unbiased. People do it a Lot, my dad being one of them. He falls into the Trap of treating "both Sides of the Argument" as equal even when they are very much Not. but He insists on treating them as the same Level, even when one is saying "climate Change increases the risk of draughts and fires in our country, we should probably try to mitigate it" and the other one says "but CO2 is good for plants" (yes, that happened, who needs water i guess...) Striving for neutrality in journalism means being aware of your own biases and trying to not Fall into them, because it May prevent you from taking a proper look at the topic. Your conclusion shouldnt be "both Sides are right" but rather, "Here are the Arguments, this is where they come from, and HERE is why x and y are Not equally good Arguments"
Probably my favorite video yet! Great job! This isn't just for women or Trad Wives, but for all genders and professions. Imagine a better world for all!
Bonjour, au sujet de l'article de presse de Ballerina Farm, la journaliste ne fait que décrire l'environnement de manière très concrète et simple, puis citer des phrases dites pendant l'interview sans donner un avis. C'est à nous de comprendre, de nous faire un avis. Elle a été justement incroyable avec cette prise de position littéraire et journalistique, avec des : fermer les guillemets et point, à tout bout de champs. Qui donnent un côté très "tout est dit pas besoin de rajouter quoique ce soit" à son article. C'est dans son second article qu'elle déroule son point de vue, non dans le premier. Le premier est très descriptif, un peut sarcastique du coup, et joue sur le fait que tout est dit par les actions. Cet article est brillant ! Parce qu'il montre justement, sans rien dire, juste en décrivant, la situation wtf de cette femme et de cet endroit, et que qui veut voir et entendre, voit et entend.
Maybe if there are kids involved it would make sense but imagine these situations: A and B are a married couple with both of them working a job for which they get €2,000 each. After they go home they do all the housework by themselves. Thus they barely have any free time. C and D are also a married couple but only C works outside of the hombe, making €4,000. D stays at home and takes cares of the chores so C can get home and rest. Now explain me why we should take money from A and B to pay D for work that doesn't benefit them at all?
Hey ! 1. Domestic work, even without children, has an economic value. According to a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in 2017, unpaid domestic work in the United States is estimated to be worth around $1.2 trillion per year, a significant amount that reflects the value of these invisible but crucial contributions. In 2015, a study by the Royal Economic Society estimated that women's domestic work in the United Kingdom was worth approximately 1 trillion British pounds per year, which represents around 56% of the UK's GDP. 2. Women, in their role as "caregivers" at home, also play a crucial role in reducing healthcare costs, not only for themselves and their children but also for their husbands. Women who provide caregiving at home (such as administering medications, managing medical appointments, and assisting with illnesses or injuries) can help avoid costly hospitalizations or medical treatments for their husbands. A study by the National Alliance for Caregiving (2015) estimated that informal care provided to aging or sick spouses saves billions of dollars each year in healthcare costs. 3. Moreover, a study by Harvard University in 2018 found that married men whose wives prepare balanced meals have a longer life expectancy and a reduced risk of heart disease compared to men who rely on takeout or a more sedentary lifestyle. This phenomenon can be attributed to the influence of home-cooked dietary habits, portion control, and the quality of ingredients. 4. All of this doesn’t take into account the European aspect and the billions of euros saved in social security. When you have a woman who has time and can take better care of the home than a woman who works long hours, they often end up not having health problems, whether moderate or serious, not having children-or having them later with risks to the woman's health and the fetus, divorce, poor home maintenance, which also leads to the degradation of property that is not good for the community, and no time for elderly people who end up languishing in nursing homes, nor for their children who will be raised on tablets and by nannies. And yes, I’ve taken care of children in wealthy households with "girlboss" moms, who, despite doing less for their children, still did more than their husbands. Struggling, extreme fatigue, leading to kids addicted to tablets, throwing tantrums, because they are no longer properly raised. These women ( and men ) rarely had the chance to cook, thankfully, some husbands helped more with that. But often, it ended up with sandwiches. In the evening, the children ate alone in front of their tablets at 6 PM, frozen meals on luxury sofas. No meals were prepared, no family bonding, because the work was never finished, no parental presence, while the children constantly asked me why they never saw their parents. I’ve seen it, believe me.Believe me, I see nothing but this. But also because, factually, they are passionate and want to work, but this world is not designed to balance both, so they have to choose what to sacrifice and how. Eventually, she’ll want to divorce just to get some time for herself because society is asking the impossible of her at the expense of her body, her family, her husband, her job, her elderly parents, and so on.I was raised by a nanny and a mom who was a boss, whom I love. I only saw her once a week. She told me she had to put us to bed at 10-11 PM during the week just to make sure she could have at least one meal with us. She definitely did her best and was a true girlboss. But I was constantly crying for my nanny, not my mom. My parents worked so much that they had no patience when it came to raising me, like most do today. They used contempt or humiliation because it yielded better short-term results, and they didn’t have the time to do better (perhaps also the desire).And today, she doesn't know who I am, and our relationship is just fine. Despite all of this, the woman will still have more work to do because she is always the one taking care of the house and the family. She has to work, deal with her menstrual cycles and hormonal changes to the point where she may have to suppress her periods just to fit into the work market designed and shaped for men's bodies.Giving them cancer etc You will also see that household chores are shared when both have rather flexible hours, but this will not be the case in most situations, because statistically, men work more hours, at least in paid jobs. In contrast, women generally work more hours because they typically fill the gap in manual labor jobs, overtime, and the labor market that demands too much from one individual so they don’t have to hire two people. And the fact will always remain that it’s the woman who gets pregnant for 9 months, ( sometimes multiples times for more children )a period that will likely affect her career afterwards, that it’s she who will take care of the child the most, especially if she is breastfeeding, (Very often, women who work a lot, or work at all, decide not to breastfeed. I had to give them formula milk, even as a baby.) and that it’s the child who will mostly want their mother, which will prevent her from working those extra hours that men tend to take on. So today, it is impossible to say that household tasks are fairly shared and well done when both are working, and even worse when they have children. This world is not made for women's maternity and for the differences between men and women. There will always be roof tiles to replace properly to prevent the roof from degrading, a garden to take care of so you don't end up eating junk, annoying chores like descaling the shower so it doesn't deteriorate and need to be replaced in three years, etc. All these tasks are pushed to later when, for most workers who work more than 35 hours a week, it’s difficult to find the time, and spending one of your two days off cleaning the house rather than spending time for yourself or with your family is a challenge. A stay-at-home mom, even without children, contributes billions every year by properly taking care of the adults who work and live longer in the workforce. She will take care of her children without relying on daycare most of the time and will care for others much more easily than a woman working outside the home who is trying to juggle all the roles society expects her to fulfill. Because, as you said, if A and B are supposed to do the work, the problem is that B doesn’t do it. B doesn’t do the work and never has had to.
I don't agree with paying for domestic work. This seems like a liberal solution to maintain the dichotomy of reproductive work as a woman's thing, and productive work as a man's thing. The radical solution would be to work less and earn better wages, so that we have time and conditions to do the reproductive work, equally, involving all adults in a home. At least it is what I've learned with the socialist feminists, which are not so much popular anymore
Except that this doesn’t take into account the differences between men and women, and thus the inequalities that today weigh on society. To the point that women no longer want children, no longer breastfeed, and no longer have the time to educate, etc. It’s not the men that the children call for; they’re not the ones breastfeeding, carrying children for nearly a year, or several years if they have multiple children, which then directly impacts their career. The simple fact that a woman has children is already at odds with the idea of a 50/50 system. If a woman decides to genuinely care for a child as science suggests (breastfeeding up to age 2-3, spending 3 hours a day with the child for bonding through only interaction and play from ages 0 to 5, short nights, dedicated devotion, etc.), if we really wanted to make this possible, women would work barely 15 to 20 hours a week. You will also see that household chores are shared when both have rather flexible hours, but this will not be the case in most situations, because statistically, men work more hours, at least in paid jobs. In contrast, women generally work more hours because they typically fill the gap in manual labor jobs, overtime, and the labor market that demands too much from one individual so they don’t have to hire two people. And I’m sure there are women who wouldn’t thrive in that role, and the choice should always be available. But just the fact that we experience hormonal fluctuations-which, for one-third of women, makes work uncomfortable or even worrying for two weeks every month, sometimes for months on end (as is the case for me)-shows clearly that society isn’t made for us, but for men. Most of us have to suppress our menstrual cycles just to keep working. Take away your pill or implant, and you’ll see how tiring life really is when the body has to create hormones naturally in a world polluted by endocrine disruptors, which have impacted an entire generation of women. One-third of us have hormonal issues, including endometriosis, PCOS, etc. Being a woman in a society made for men should come with compensation-compensation for our bodies, our health, and for the fact that we bring life into the world at the expense of promotions and extraordinary careers. The real problem lies in your explanations. If we give women in the home the opportunity to earn money, I quote: "This means that men are productive and women, what do you do, just reproduce." The idea that being productive is better than conceiving is just as misogynistic as the men of the past. Accepting women for who they are is truly feminist, accepting career woman AND woman at home is truly feminist. And the work it involves is far harder than any career. The experience of men who try to stay at home and take care of the children has shown that they find it more difficult than their own jobs (engineer, architect, mason, etc.).Because we can be who we want to be, but in a productivity-driven society, doing both requires either sacrificing both or sacrificing one. And given the generations I work with, I see where the sacrifice is being made. Thinking that we are war machines meant to destroy our health as we are asked to today is disgusting. We are in competition with men who do not have to procreate, have much more testosterone, and whose hormonal fluctuations do not disrupt their lives, are more stronger etc. They need less sleep per night to function (7 to 8 hours for men and 9 to 10 hours for women to function normally), which, of course, doesn’t fit with what society has shaped for us. Our brains are also different from birth, even in the embryo. While much comes from what we acquire, there is also an innate part that feminism wants to eliminate in order to idealize a truth that does not exist. The fact is, there will inevitably be women who want to raise their children as best as possible, in a clean environment, with homemade dinners and snacks-not just Kinder bars and frozen food at 6 p.m. in front of a tablet. In practice, this is real work, and not paying these women leaves them vulnerable to men who have always known how to leverage their power. You give them 2-3 children, they potentially lose their job, the long break makes it hard to get back into the workforce, and they end up trapped, dependent on their husbands. This is especially true for disadvantaged women who didn’t have access to education. In concrete terms, work must be compensated. Any work that contributes to society deserves a salary, and raising the next generation is undoubtedly one that should come with a solid annual wage. Women must finally reclaim the money that allowed empires to be built after years of slavery and widespread ra^e. We must reclaim our power of reproduction. I can understand why some women decide to stay home. Especially when you consider the billions of euros they bring to society every year. Fortunately, they’re here, without question.
I loved all of the editing on this one. You did an exceptional job, and it truly tied together the whole presentation. Thank you for all of your efforts in sharing your philosophical insights with us.
I'm surprised that you did not go one step further and conclude to the necesity for UBI. All your development was ponting to it. Being members of the working class, we are the one doing the work. All the work, domestic included. Because of that we deserve wages, regardless of what we chose to do. If your are not already familiar with it, I suggest you look at Bernard Friot work about that.
The problem is that those traditional wives didn't have financial security or any assets, the same as now, no pension, no savings account, no disability insurance, no salary, no paid vacation and no maximum working hours. Just a sex slave with a different name.
The average marriage in my country until the 80s: husband and wife do the same job in their landlord's field, husband gets drunk and has bastards, wife does household chores until a daughter is old enough to raise the nine siblings, and each subsequently beats someone smaller. Americans get to play retvrn.
It’s not. I’m Mexican, and we have our own version of tradwives. The thing is what is considered “traditional” varies culture to culture. For example, in Japan, traditional women are in charge of the finances. In America, they are notoriously.
I wish this video would include some analysis from Soviet feminist from the early 1930s and '40s that called for the abolishment of the traditional family and a move towards communal child rearing that liberated women and people capable of giving birth from the burden of child rearing. Early communist China had very similar feminist ideas about this as well.
Great video Alice! I often found myself pausing to think about what you said, then when I hit play you would bring up an idea or paper which perfectly matched my thoughts! I think you hit the nail on the head at the end of the video. We can't look at it solely through a gendered lens as we would have to pay the house husbands as well as the housewives. If we do not pay housework evenly between the genders, this further solidifies the womans role in the household as the caretaker. As such, it is as you said at the end of the video, we need to look at this issue from a broader societal perspective of necessary unpaid labour. In general, the idea does make me a little uneasy. It does feel as though we are subsuming more of our social and domestic life into Capitalism if we do this. I know you mention that the social structure that supports Capitalism must be analysed as part of the system but I still feel that paying for housework moves us negative direction. At work, I have to feel out timesheets to ensure things are billed properly, I have to follow certain procedures and rules as to what I can and cannot do. I feel that by paying housework wages, we invite this kind of oversight and regulation into our home, as we are being paid, we may have to follow rules or regulations to receive that pay. This for me makes the idea of changing the culture so that men are expected (and do) more housework more appealing. I know you'll never read this but it was still a good opportunity to solidify my thoughts. PS: I learned this video that we are the same age, wasn't expecting that!
I think this, especially the closing remarks, can be understood as a advocacy for a livable uninersal basic income. Considering that our planet and the people working on it produce enough to provide every single person on it with food, clothes, housing, healthcare and education, it doesn't seem unreasonable. Unless, of course, we think, it's fair that some people take such a big chunk of goods and services that there isn't enough for the rest. but we're not f***g a**hole neoliberals, are we?
I enjoyed this analysis, but I was disappointed that New Zealand's Marilyn Waring wasn't referenced at all, as a key founder of Feminist Economics, and author of "If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics" (1988). It is an important and influential book!
I think the individualistic model of society started to become problematic, contradictory, and exploitative around the time that men decided they didn't care what happened to children who weren't their own and women they weren't fucking. I think that ethos underlies a lot of the criticism of gender roles and the nuclear family within modern capitalism you discuss in this video. The problem is that we've increasingly over-indexed for centuries on competition and rational self interest as somehow being the sole natural impetus for social welfare, and the system is buckling under the contradictions within that reasoning.
What about women who don't give a flying f about others kids and other men and women who aren't as privileged as them? Why is this a men issue in particular you men hating misandrist?
@Alanalan12297 I'm talking more from an anthropological origin perspective rather than about specific cases or statistics. Before birth control, before industry, right at the inception of the concept of land ownership, people who could get pregnant and nurse were intrinsically vulnerable in a way that people who used them for procreation leveraged to structure society in such a way as to regard certain humans as commodities.
All those who freak out about demographic decline should really consider this yes. I mean, if they were logical, consistent and honest about their views, of course.
this doesn’t even seem like a utopian ideal, people would argue scale but something’s got to give because the current systems arent working regardless. I know where I live for example has (not perfect but still) programs that subsidize and pay full time family caretakers for the elderly and disabled. There is a general shortage of in home caretakers and insufficiency in the in patient care . it’s a logical help for both an industry that is burnt out and family members to not have to choose between caregiving or an income.
I think giving an allowance/welfare to the unemployed makes a lot of sense to me, and I believe we have that available already in the country I live in. I do have questions about implementing an allowance for the reason of "paying for housework". Mainly, how does one become eligible for it? -for example, what about families where both parents work? They will still need to clean their house somehow, and arguably they may have even less time to do it, esp if they don't earn enough to hire housekeepers. Will they be eligible for the benefit? -for many 'trad' households or even households where the people own the house, it can be argued that they are more well-off because they own capital (their house). So can they still claim the benefit, or will it only be available for renters/people who don't own their homes? -how much housework is translatable for the amount of benefit you can receive? Will a bigger houses give more benefit? -what is the standard of living expected to be eligible for the benefit? Ideally you should clean your house often, but normally you can let a house get dirty for a few days without adverse health effects. So how to measure the acceptable quality of life to justify needing the benefit? If we want to ignore all of these details and just say "every household should receive a benefit" then I think that's just UBI right? Which I completely support btw. But yeah keen to know exactly how this policy should be best structured to help the people who need it most and be fair
If the goal is to reduce the power imbalance between the unemployed and the employed, then whatever the wage for housework is should be paid in its entirety to the party who doesn't have a regular income otherwise. Extrapolating from that it should probably be shared between couples scaling on how equal their wage hours are until they are paid equally for working the same hours outside the home, with the expectation that the couple will share housework proportionally to how many hours they themselves work. Not getting paid for housework shouldn't be a deterrent from home ownership, so home owners should be paid the same as renters. Yes, it does benefit a lot of people who might not be in need, but it would also incentivise people to get out of landlord relationships to discourage landlord businesses and could be the push some people need in making the decision of buying. Perhaps scaling the wage to home size on some margin because obviously handling a larger home is more work. I don't think there should be a set standard to get the wage. There will always be people who think they can "game" the system by living in more squalor, but they're doing that already and paying for it wouldn't change that. Although perhaps there could be a bonus for a good enough job, but I don't know how that could be justly enforced without invasions of privacy.
Hi. I like what you have to say here and support UBI, too. I think the questions you ask are both good and fair. The subject matter is a little different than different forms of social welfare (a term that I do not apply a negative denotation or connotation to), but the questions you ask and the questions of means testing relative to social welfare in the form of monetary distribution are somewhat similar. While all these questions have to do with fairness (which makes some sense), do they best address the solutions towards human equality and the ability to survive and flourish collectively (we want that, correct?)? Do we have to remain within the capitalist paradigm which creates a context for means testing? Are resources on this planet so limited that scarcity doesn't allow for a different paradigm or more mutually beneficial socio-economic system? I would answer "no" to these questions (except the one in parentheses), but that is my perspective. Is it yours, too? I think for UBI to ultimately be successful, it would not only have to provide for people to subsist with a sense of dignity, but also provide the material requirements for people to recognize each in their dignity (i.e. a shared sense of mutual respect). I think this is a possibility, but only within the logic of a society/public engaged in a non-zero sum game of existence where means testing wouldn't make a lot of sense... but maybe you understand things more clearly and can help my understanding... that's one of the goals here, right? Anyway, thanks for your initial reply to the video-essay. Very solid and your head and heart seem to be moving in a positive direction from my vantage. Even if I don't hear from you again here, take care and best of luck
The "regeneration" angles are really interesting, since they open up the field to include conversations on leisure, mental health, inclusion, childhood, adolescence, elderls...
While we're talking imperatives, I say we should decommodify everything, so everyone - wives, husbands, and children - can get what they need (as determined by their demands and workers) regardless of surplus value.
Wonderful video, as always! Been watching for a long while, and every video is always super clear, entertaining and provides great insight and authors to follow up on! In my uneducated opinion, to deconstruct gender roles is to deconstruct capitalism, to deconstruct capitalism is to deconstruct gender roles. To attempt to do one without the other will never work. Dissolving the boundaries of a lot of current class structures is inevitable, but only when all classes, both existing and potential, are pared down to their essence and defined with a clear disambiguation between fiction and the actual metrically measurable qualities of each differentiated class, with the comparable negatives and positives listed and sorted, will a system more profitable to capitalism than capitalism itself emerge.
Super interesting concept, stay at home parents definitely deserve more recognition/support/value. I’m a working mum and lately dream of being a stay at home mum, even just for a couple of years. I never thought I would want to do that, but I can now see how it could bring real value to my family and my life experience. A few thoughts - my other half helps with the house work, he likes to contribute and I think it makes him feel needed in the household. I wonder would a housework wage discourage the ‘go to work’ parent from helping out? Maybe the kids could also use this excuse to not do their chores…? Could it feel like a trap or too much pressure in a way, it could open the ‘stay to work’ person to criticism and it would be a difficult situation to quit. Also, regards be paid to give birth; could being paid to create future workers (children) mean people choose to have kids, for society or for money, and not for themselves, which is the way it should be I believe. There is also a lot of logistical questions, who would actually pay this wage, etc? I’m not against the idea at all, it definitely should be given some serious thought so it doesn’t create other problems, like more oppression for women. Could be fantastic if it worked though.
Some ideas of compensating are relevant. Many western European governments provide a lot of child daycare subsidies. And every time (although less children are born), those government costs rise. In addition, parents still also have to pay a lot of their wages towards those day care situations. Then we create child care studies in high school (minimum 4 years), but those children when they receive their diploma, they have to compete with labour immigrants who only need to follow an 8-week course to do the same work. So many of those high school graduate chose another job. Then we complain that language skills deteriorate of children as they are partly in day care centres where 80% has low local language knowledge. Then we have to subsidize other organisations that deal with adjusting the deteriorated skills of children. More specialized teachers. Also, a phenomenon there are fewer children, but we have the highest amount of teachers in history. And they always have a shortage of teachers. Then kindergarten teachers complain that children of three years are way behind their level (that they are becoming daycare centres). So that means the argument daycare is better for development children is better is failing.
Well, goverments usually give subsidies or tax exemptions to families. That is economically giving money to the creators of the labour force. It just doesn't differentiate between partners.
It would be amazing if tradwife content creators help normalize payment for domestic labour. Go tradwives! I usually fixate on the cultural trappings and political bias that goes with the discourse around them, but I would love if this is something we could get a bit of cooperation with along the political spectrum. I think centering the discussion around women to start will help the movement gain much more traction as it's a lot easier to understand for the average person. Also I'm not gonna lie, at 18:00-ish when Alice discussed the journalist's bias towards Ballerina Wife I was preparing myself for a Ground News plug, it sounded like the perfect setup for it and it just never came lol
This is a common conversation I have with women on all ends of the political spectrum, it's always seemed out of reach, but it might just end up being a rising tide, especially as both parties seem driven towards incentivizing child-rearing in the USA.
Per usual I like this video and many of the perspectives and activities that it advocates. In a nutshell, understanding that pretty much all activity, especially labor and all the activities that constitute as labor (the main focus here being what tends to be termed as domestic labor), adds/contributes to social production within (and/or makes up) the political economy is accurate (imo). This understanding provides a basis for recognizing the equality and basic human dignity that is shared and should be shared among people (i.e. all individuals), and thereby can, does and would alter the inequalities of power within interpersonal relationships (sorry, I am drawing broad generalizations, in part to be brief in order to get to my point) that are manifested through hierarchies of identity that are expressed latently from social hegemony. I guess what I find somewhat strange (not a value judgment, just a sense of novelty, I guess) and possibly problematic with the practical solutions provided here (I am not against them, but that doesn't mean I don't want to look at them through a critical lens to try and gauge their possible efficacy and potential implications) is the possible quantification by means of currency and, therefore, monetization of all activity. Is everything I do, think and say able to be monetized? If I eat an apple, then I create a lack of an apple, so if I want nourishment in the future through an apple, I would have to procure it through currency which I gain through labor... so, even my consumption is an act of social production. Do we as people want to quantify all of our actions into currency? Is everything a commodity or a financial transaction? Is this perspective of transactionality the only means to realize the ends of human equality? I don't know. I think these are things we have to decide collectively, and this video is a part of that conversation, which is great. I guess I am ultimately curious if similar ends of human equality could be achieved through universal basic income, (or maybe a c,ombination of ubi with income for both "traditional" labor and the labor of "social reproduction"). Again these seem like questions that should be answered collectively, but have to admit on a personal level, I balk a bit at the idea of quantifying everything. Money and power are matters of the most serious and important consideration relative to how they affect people's lives, but if all life is is money and power, why live it?
I only see one solution that would work in this case. A state provided base income, that you only get if you do not have a job or if you don't earn a certain amount. This would be financed by a fund that collects money from companies for every worker. It's more if the company pays workers too little or massively more, and it's more if workers have to work too much. Basically you could tweak it in a way that everybody has time to do their fair share of unpaid work and also get the companies to pay everyone a living wage and not overcompensate certain rolls. This would automatically lead to less social friction due to certain people earning millions while other doing a system relevant job and just barely getting through the month...
The main issue I have with wages for housework is that it misunderstands things about capitalism that marx had pointed out all the way back. The relationship between the role of women and that of men is not that women are exploited by men but that women are oppressed by men and both are exploited by capital who reenforces said oppression. We often talk about how women are pushed into ALL reproductive labor but in turn men are pushed into ALL productive labor. Capital functions with the family as the smallest family unit hence why in the wage of the man is hidden the wage of the domestic wife. A wage for house work would simply result in making that partition obvious and give women control over their share which would be a step in one direction however it would not be in the direction of an actual solution. What would happen instead is what you see today with women entering the workforce (which is a good thing) they came out of the reserve army of labor and both genders start more and more doing both productive and reproductive labor while competing for the wages of productive labor. It literally means now what was previously a unit doing 40hours of labor and the same in reproductive now has become to units doing the same amount of reproductive labor (assuming they are not living by themselves independently which would mean twice as much) while also doing twice the amount of productive labor as both work full time while also the capitalist can drive wages even lower because competition is greater. It's why we have seen a rise in cohabitation. We are still getting trapped in familial relations on the reproductive front just no longer hereditary ones meanwhile getting exploited even harder. Hence why you can't emancipated the reproductive worker without emancipating the working class in general. And all this assuming you could actually make it happen, the question of power and who could actually make the domestic wage a thing and whether they would be willing has not at all been tackled cause if it was you would realize that it would require basically revolution and then if you already got that far might as well build socialism
I'd like to comment and idea of Kathi Weeks from her work "The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries" about de housework pay: she interpreted the movement not like a real demand but like a provocation in order to illuminate the intersections between patriarchy and wage-labour capitalism. In the case of a housework salary: who will pay the salary? The husband? The state? A corporation? This doesn't matter because the objective as a provocation, as Kathi Week interpreted, is not to integrate the housework to the chains of valorization under the capitalims but to put light over the differential exploitation of women and why is necessary for the capitalism reproduction and the exploitation of wage labor itself, at the the same time (and also, in a more academic approach, talk about how social sciences tended to ignore the housework and women explotation, and its importance in society, and how this had done bad for the inteligibility of our social structures moreover if the inteligibility is oriented to political action)
Yo great vid, but maybe better as an introduction of the UBI issue and a much needed rethinking of everyone's social contracts into smt that ultimately can throw aside gender, race, age and so on and produce a post-rat race society with a more balanced life philosophy to help people be more driven to having more daily roles in all fields, education, sports, politics, social (in and outside of family), arts, and yes even work, all in relation to our place in the world as its inhabitants. Then maybe we could have a chance in taking to the stars... without fucking it all up ofc. I'd love a video like that.
Great video as always, Alice! Probably could have been an hour long tbh. Love how you managed to fit in gender roles at the end. The whole video, I was thinking that if, hypothetically, we started recognizing the value of domestic work in the larger economy juuuust as soon as men start doing more of it, that would be pretty on-brand for humanity (giving “if men got pregnant, you could get an abortion at an ATM”). But hey, progress is progress 😅
Here in Brazil one of the conservatives jargons is something like "in defense of the family". They are very active and loud here, when talking about family often advocating against feminism and the LGBT+. Now watching this it makes so much sense and the people who reproduce this idea definitely have no idea where it comes from and who it benefits.
You can't pay someone for taking care of their family in the literal sense - ie get a monthly cheque, but there is a definitely merit in govt' supporting the family unit more which many governments do via tax breaks, credits for various social services etc. and many govt's aim to do more.
No, but a woman who works 10+ hours a day in domestic labor, 7 days a week without a salary, without weekends off, without vacation days, no pension, no savings account, that's a modern slave but with society approval, and on top of that giving birth to the children of her owner, risking her life (literally) and with the final outcome of getting divorced and without official working experience.
@@Valentina.Montano I am not sure what your point is, it is in no way modern day slavery when it is a CHOICE. No one forces you to be a trad wife or have kids, paying people for their life choices is a slippery slope. Who is supposed to pay them and how much?
@@aduad That’s why I can’t get behind this. Every choice has a consequence whether it be positive or negative. In trad-relationships the husband is supposed to pay for everything. If he is unable to, then sorry, but trad-life may not be for that couple. We can’t always get what we want and for a lot of people trad-life is just a desire. It’s not realistic and it’s not on the government or tax payers to make people’s fantasies come true.
Well, not necessarily. I had my first exactly at the same age as my mom had her first. But She had retired granparents! One of my grans was a Stay at home and the other a teacher, retired after 35 years of service, meaning, late 40s. She also had a house (payed By the grandparents ) and wage gaps between educated more and less educated people was bigger than today. Meaning, I dont get the help She did, and also, i cant afford the extra labor She could and did. Even if i had less kids, my domestic labor is larger, due to my parents being the "sandwich" generation: still working AND caring for their aging parents. So lack of community, one of the well know features of today society means less sharing of child rearing too.
My country doesn't have enough facilities for older people and so there is talk about paying family members who take on the caring. My head almost blew up because what is so different between that and child care? There is also a lack of child care. But no one wants to pay a mom.
@@tiahnarodriguez3809 LOL, 'traditionally' it was not. Y'all just know your history. Traditionally, women were subhuman property. You don't pay your lamp for lampin'
I do agree with most of the concepts of this video, but I feel a very important argument was actually left out. At least around me there is a growing tendency of husbands doing a lot of domestic labor. It is not clear to me how it is possible to actually measure and pay respectively each party. There are families in which the woman both works full time and covers for most of the domestic labor. There are cases like my family, my husband cares for the kids more than I do, I do more plannings, chores, etc. The complexity of the situations somehow makes it hard to put into a frame driving wages.
Hi Alice! I love that you have music in the back of this video, it really sets the mood, but could you please in the next video just lower the volume a tiny bit? I find it a little bit distracting :) Thanks for an interesting video as always!
Yes, I think she " mandate" or "support a decree" really do´nt know the details , but during her leaderchip in Argentina the house wives were paid ....
Am open to the domestic work being paid. But the frustrating thing is the gap between the working class and middle class, and the upper class in this regard. Upper class, hired servants to help them, most of the financial decisions in the home are done by the stay at home spouse with the single income earner having less choice in the decision about allocation of their income besides maybe one hobby room or outside activity. Now go back to working class and middleclass. Hard to have a single income earning household and would the pay for the domestic household tasks come from the main earner? Because then it is effectively a tight squeeze and having a single income earning family becomes unaffordable. And dual income which is the norm in the uk involves compromises in all the domestic and home duties between the higher income earner and the lower income earner. With that compromise affecting time spent with their children teaching educating and bonding with them. They cant pay externally for domestic chores to be done so its compromises all the way down Not sure whwt the solution for this is besides it having a chilling affect on working and middleclass people wanting to have families. Wonder whether parenting can similar be commodified into an economic model. It starts to get a bit iffy Social reproduction theory does sound interesting though
This is her 100th video on this channel
!!!
Congrats on 100 Alice!
Don't assume a gender. You might get burn.
Technically 101st since she deleted a video
Omg congrats!!!!
My wife and I ( a man) both worked full time. No kids. But even without kids some of the domestic didn’t happen because we were so busy with capitalism. I ended up leaving my job for various reasons, but have discovered a love for domestic life. I do all the housework, cooking, taking care of pets and running errands. My wife works outside the home. As a man I never thought domestic work would appeal to me but I am actually perfectly suited to it. Since we don’t have kids I continue to do odd jobs to make a little money, but we have found this nontraditional, slower life works extremely well for both of us. We’ve never been happier (or more broke).
The same happened with my wife and me (also a man)! Capitalism pays her good but doesn't seem to like me near as much, so instead of wasting my time at work I take care of the house and pets. At first it felt weird, but after some years it's pretty normal now.
"so busy with capitalism" is so funny and perfect hahaha
The capp..ist rat race robs all of our time to do really important things. Most jobs are BS and not only pointless, but actively make society and lives worse for working class people.
The fact that you two have to work ath the same time or else be pretty broke...
This made me sad
Another type of unpaid work that fits well into this framework (and is done mostly by working class women) is care for the elderly and people with severe disabilities.
THIS! In nyc I’ve noticed adds for a program that allows for the caretaker to become registered and get paid for taking care of their loved one.
While it does make absolute sense for assistive care to be supported by social programs (no question, I'm all for it), the "payment" for caring for others yourself is "not having to pay others to do it". If we start thinking along the lines that any thing we do ourselves is "unpaid work" the conversation can get a bit crazy... like if I spend 2 hours listening to a friend, is that "unpaid psychology work", or if I pick up the groceries in a store, am I an "unpaid delivery worker"? Again, absolutely agree with social programs supporting assistive care, it's just that conceptually this is not really the right way to look at it, in my opinion.
A much better result can be achieved by framing it as a social issue (providing assistive care takes time and effort which means less time for paid activities, therefore social support is warranted), while contextualizing it as a "work/wage issue" doesn't do it much good.
I think it's important that Ballerina Farm looks like a housewife, but she's running a few businesses between her social media, their cattle products, and the homemaking tools. My read of the article was very much about how odd it is that she's the face of all of that while not seeming to have much say in the big decisions - she does the labor to support whatever decisions are made by her husband, the manager. It definitely could have done a better job of framing her as part of the labor force, but I thought the critiques of her work environment seemed fair.
In general, though, I agree that we need to advocate for support (including financial!) of people who do domestic work. I think the same issue of devaluing "women's work" also affects nursing and education, since both are seen as care-work and something women should just "naturally" do.
Paid maternity leave is great. But _mandatory_ paternity leave could be a good idea too. This would make the job field less unequal, especially for positions with a very high salary. In countries that have paid paternity leave, it's usually optional. A company will take into consideration that a job candidate who won't give birth is likely to not take paternity leave, or that paternity leave is much shorter than maternity leave, and favour that candidate.
Men who become fathers for the first time work harder to provide for their growing family. That is what men do and are expected to do by their wives.
@@goldentalon This is an extremely outdated view and one that only becomes more distant from reality by the day.
Maybe this would also force companies to actually hire temporary workers when someone goes on maternity or paternity leave. And also hire enough staff so that when parents continually ask for time off because of their kid, it doesn't feel like everyone else is stuck picking up their slack. Because unless society has some radical changes and forces workplaces to make those changes, it's never going to feel fair for a parent who actually takes time off for their kids (as they should; why have kids if you won't take care of them?) to get a promotion over a non-parent.
Sweden has a great system where they give paid parental leave, but both parents must each take around half or else they lose it.
@@goldentalon That situation is manufactured by the economic system we exist in. It's a bad system and we can change it.
I like the idea of paying for domestic work. The major problem I had with tradwife influencers is that they are essentially women with money, power, and choice cosplaying as women who in real life often have little or no power, money, and choice. Paying domestic work will go a ways to give stay at home mothers some level of power and control over their lives, even if just a little.
yep, same as a man cosplaying as soldiers by stacking an arsenal of guns.Is a GI joe/vigilante fantasy
Especially whenever you see footage of their "household" work, everything is extremely neat, beautiful and sort of "sanitized". Almost as if dirty rags, spills, slips, breakage or any mess cannot possibly exist in this "household cosplay universe."
It seems it's not really about that, there doesn't seem to be the expectation this would actually happen or at least it's not meant as a practical solution. (video points that out)
I agree with what's it's trying to achieve, but in practice this would be insanely complicated to regulate and administer, insanely expensive to maintain, and open to all kinds of loopholes. Can you even imagine how to manage a program like this? Who would be eligible? How much to pay? How to make sure the money actually goes to the domestic worker? How to make sure people aren't still working anyway? How to make sure people don't just quit their jobs? Absolute chaos :P
And even if it COULD be properly implemented, it would totally miss the point: IF it's backed by a social institution then it would just be seen as welfare, which would completely miss the point of being seen as work in the context of capitalism. If backed by other members of the household, it would be seen as allowance, which again, misses the point.
Anyway, like Alice said, it clearly has it's set of problems, and proponents are well aware. It just makes more sense to address more fundamental issues, rather than seeing this as an actual solution.
Just in case it's helpful: "family planning" is actually a euphemism for contraception, rather than meaning managing the family's calendar! But great video essay and UBI now!
Alice’s editing game is strong with this one. Well done 👏🏽
New editor can you tell! Ahah
I brought up the uncompensated domestic labor when I lived in a housemate situation with two men. They laughed and said they didn't value that kind of work and got along just fine with a dirty home before I moved in. So I quit doing the work again. It was disgusting, I feel like I should have been paid to live that long without doing dishes or letting trash fill up and overflow. When I couldn't stand it anymore I went back to cleaning, for my OWN sanity and ability to use the kitchen. These guys were toxic and used that to say it came "naturally" to me to be more clean. I just don't like maggots growing in my dish sink, is all.
Nah wtf. As a man, that mindset boggles my mind. How can you live like that? I'm fine if things aren't organized, but piles of garbage and dirty dishes is a no-no🙅🏽♂️
I lived with a female roommate who acted the same, and my guy friend complained that he was the only one who felt the need to clean in his house with other male roommates. Its not necessarily gendered, but in domestic cases with "traditional" gender roles it most often is the woman doing most if not all the work.
That happened to me to with my brother a long time ago. He finally learned his lesson when he had to move as a part of the military and I wasn’t around anymore to be his maid. 🤦🏽♀️ (for the record I still love him and we get along great.)
I may be a jerk, but...if they're fine with a dirty home, and you're the only one who's not, I really don't see why they should pay/compensate for somethink they did not ask. Regardless of gender, and even if they benefit from it at the end.
At the end of the day, you clean if you want your house clean, and you don't if you don't care. I don't see where money comes into play.
@@alioshax7797 I get what you’re saying, but a lot of times when people say they’re fine living in filth. What they’re really saying is they’re fine waiting till someone else cleans up the mess. I highly doubt they were truly ok living in filth. Otherwise they wouldn’t have told OP that she does it better than them which signals that they see value in her labor, they’re just too lazy to do it themselves. So, yes, OP should’ve been compensated, but it doesn’t work like that, and it was best to just leave imo.
Yes, I think it should be a paid position and that's what conservatives ought to be in favor of if they really want their "traditional family" to be economically viable. But of course, they really don't because, as you mention, this would lead to recognizing it as work and having to negotiate a fair wage. They want women in that role because it's "in their nature." Interesting video as always, Alice! Hope you are well!
But it should be paid by the husband, together with the pension and disability insurance and savings account. That's not something the government should pay. They get the wife, they pay for it.
“If they really want their "traditional family" to be economically viable”
Except… it was without that?
The fact you had single income households among the lower classes (a factory worker for example) that could actually support a family is proof of that.
That it’s practically an impossibility now should be the real debate, and beg the question of what on earth we’re doing wrong to deteriorate economically to the extent we have.
The conservative moral ought looks very different from this
"What is a woman? A scam to get free labour!"
@@Valentina.Montano Exactly women who complain they should be paid for it should complain to their own husbands. And actually if he is their traditional husband in daily life and not just in the marriage contract... his money should be her money too. So women who think they need to be paid already got screwed by their partner. Most women do housework including the working mums or the single women even teenagers and some kids do housework et home that is part of life there is no need to paid for that. Unless in your household with your husband you agreed to leave your job to stay at home. Then it's the couple's responsibility to think about how to adjust to that. Women who choose stay at home don't contribute more to society they just contribute differently so they don't deserve more than others except from their own husband/partner. I don't even understand why there is debate when it comes to this.
let's start talking about guys doing their homework when people live alone, they do everything themselves, but for some reason when they get together, everything goes to a woman, it's absurd
Behavioural economics, like it or not, explains the phenomenon quite well.
Orion Tarraban makes a bunch of videos on the topic, he even has a book, you may find what he says abhorrent (I certainly do to an extent) but he’s not wrong.
Also, side note, if you do watch his content, he is not a misogynist, he has a video telling men that women are “not the sundae” (the means to a fulfilling and meaningful life) and that men shouldn’t expect that of them, it’s not fair for the women (which it really isn’t), figured I’d just mention that.
No, it isn't. He makes the money and she takes care of the interior of the house and cooking. Employees work for their employers for pay. Wives work for resources and the marital act. Husbands work for services AND the marital act.
@@truecatholic1 Interesting you're assuming the woman is not working or going to school, it is only the man lol.
It's free slavery why should I work, I got my slave uhuh I mean women to do it
My ex insisted on gatekeeping housework because she was a perfectionist. Once I gave up on struggling with her to carry my own weight, she got resentful over it. Her traumas and my depression didn't help. That being said, too many men become lazy shlubs in long term relationships or marriage.
In the Netherlands this lead to a more common alternative, common in the sense for both sexes. It's called Basisloon, which translates as 'basic wages'. It is just a bit above welfare but below minimum wages. The idea behind is was that by means of this badic wages EVERYONE was well provided for, above poverty level but had still incentive enough to want a normal paid for job. And welfare? Not needed anymore. But... that was the 80s. Since then we went more liberal and more hard kapitalism, so the idea evaporated all together. The idea of a socalled household wages (yep, for the tradwifes) more or less survived, shrunken to an embrionic form. I believe there had been some short time experiments with both basic wages and housewife wages. Never be heard of again.
Everyone has basic wages, yet the woman still slaves at home.
Domestic labour with kids is full time job 365/7/24. The fair salary will be too high, that's why the society, men especially, prefers not to see and understand.
Thank you Alice for this video. I learned a lot and especially liked the idea that wages for domestic labour aim mainly to make that labour *visbile* and heavy on the system (and I see the limitations of this idea too)
I have a solution for the issue discussed in this video that I want to humbly share. Instead of paying the man as a full time employee enough to outsource the domestic labour to the wife , employing structures should guarantee to every employee 2 things : livable wage + *time* to take care of their own fair share of domestic labour. In this configuration both partners would work less (maybe half a day) and then get back home and contribute the the housework and to their community as well.
I suggest this because I observe that it's not uncommon today for families where both the mother and the father work paid jobs to tangibly struggle with the housechores, cooking, child care, etc...This shows that domestic work is a *third full time job* and not just a side activity.
For physically draining jobs, it's almost impossible for the person to contribute to the housework, so it kinda obliges the family to adapt by allocating housework to women who are primed with their socialization to accept this. Many tradwives who might not be satisfied with this partition, are comfronted with the fact that their husband's job does not make it realistic for him to contribute, and in economically struggling areas those physically draining jobs are all what's available and they are destined for men.
My analysis is at the intersection of feminism and general pro labour rights ideas I feel. Flexible jobs that don't reduce as to producing entities and don't come at the expense of our community life will solve a lot of things.
We had a whole discussion on this topic only recently in India where there was some discourse around homemakers being remunerated. That along with domestic workers (caste, religion and gender play a major role) still not getting their due.
Do you recommend any video/article on this matter?
There is a reason that fertility rates are dropping rapidly as women become equal workers. Although my partner shares equally in the housework (or more), and we have all the mod cons like robot vacuum cleaner and dishwasher etc, there are still many days of the week when the house is a mess because we're both too tired from work to do anything but order take-away.
When both parents work, 40 hour work weeks is too much to also take care of a child, EVEN IF said child goes to daycare for the same hours we work. For many people-- especially women-- it becomes a choice bewteen parenthood and a career.
I am reducing my hours to 20 hours a week and hopefully that will allow me to start thinking about producing the next generation of worker... but I am aware that I am in a priviledged position to be able to choose to work so little and not be laid off amd/or face financial hardship.
one thing that the 'wages against housework' argument seems to neglect, based on this brief summary you've given, is the vital necessity of housework. i don't believe that opting out of the work is a real solution, is even really possible. *someone* needs to do the work of caring for the home and for children, and not for capitalism's sake but for the sake of life and humanity at its core. if it's not housewives or househusbands, then it's domestic workers (maids, babysitters, etc.). the duties of feeding, clothing, emotionally supporting, educating children are *life-giving*, to the child and the caregiver.
i believe everyone should be able to live a comfortable life, with their basic needs met, and housewives being paid for their work would be a good step in that direction. to my mind, UBI (universal basic income) is the solution that covers the diverse bases you discuss at the end of all the work of social reproduction that isn't directly involved in creating capital.
Maybe it's because I'm familiar with this topic already, but I got that from her video as well. She was saying that the family and thus reproductive work are the bedrock of any productive system like capitalism.
From a policy side, I think UBI wouldn't be the right choice, because it's too expensive, has a bad rep, and wouldn't make the reproductive side transparent enough. I think literally a wage for housework would be the best choice. But since no one 'clocks in' for housework, it could be simply paid for the average hours of housework (while considering number of children, etc)
UBI could be a good first step, but I definitely do not think it can be the solution. Since EVERYONE benefits from UBI, housewives will not benefit from it to the extent that their working partner does; the working partner gets their salary AND their UBI, whereas the housewife only gets the UBI and nothing else. That is definitely better than the housewife receiving no money whatsoever, but does still leave a lot to be desired in terms of actually leveling the playing field.
I say we should pay tradwives. We should give power back to tradwives, especially to women who are poor. Domestic work is always incredibly hard. I know because I had to help take care of my nieces! I don't want to imagine having to take care of my nieces all alone like my mom and sister had.
On the third angle of Bhattacharya: The JD Vance video segment is actually a perfect example. They expect others (family, especially grandparents) to take up the care of children, so the parents can work.
It's almost as if the workforce/parents are being upheld as the most important members of society, and all the other (nonwage-working) members of society are purely a supportive class for them (this role is perhaps only surpassed by the role as consumer)
He suggested the childless cat ladies should step up and help...right after he insulted them
😂🙄
Thank you for discussing Silvia Federici’s work - she’s amazing.
This explains why countries are worried about fertility rates because they base the economy on populations (future workers/consumers) to continue performing the same tasks. Its sounds interconnected.
This is a very good point. I always thought that populations going down could be beneficial. There would be more food and housing to go around.
They’re worried about fertility because they can’t just print money to pay for senior citizens.
That’s literally it, seniors are an economic burden, paid for by the youth, no youth, no capital, no capital, you need to print more, you print more, inflation, inflation = big problems, ergo, how do you solve the problem?
Import workers and encourage fertility, ideally the first one, since it’s cheaper to get migrants who are working age, you don’t need to educate them and they’re uninformed of their rights for an extended period of time, and they tend to try being their families over too.
Fundamentally it’s a problem that can’t be fixed, most governments that grace this earth do not care for the welfare of their citizens, nor will they even if it was in their best interests.
@@sulimanthemagnificent4893 💯
@@faeriesmakit's crazy because there really could be
@@sulimanthemagnificent4893
This is too shallow to be an explanation. If you have a shrinking population you end up raising less taxes to pay for your welfare state, it's not just greedy people holding onto power, you actually have to cut your aid the poorest in society because the state has less money. Not only that, a shrinking population leads to a shriking economy, less job opportunities, no pay raises and/or higher unenployment. You don't really want that for your country because, as always, it's the poor that end up paying the bill.
I may be projecting my own ideas onto the topic, but I feel like a big takeaway here is that “Should we pay tradwives?” isn’t really the question we should be asking. It reinforces gender roles and the idea of exchanging labor for money, suggesting we uphold a system where inequity and class disparity thrive.
That is a "communist critique of liberal politics" but it doesnt hold up in practical terms.
@ I’m listening…
The editing on this video is absolutely ✨ beautiful ✨
The music, the transitions, the transitions within images, the rythm... Everything is on point
Reminder that Nara Smith is NOT a tradwife, shes a model and an influencer and she gets paid by high end brands for her content.
Hannah on the other hand comes from an extremely religious backround and her husband def wouldnt want her to receive an income as a homemaker, that would be an insult to him as a provider and a christian husband.
Just mentioning this bc you picked these two women for the thumbnail...
Love a good deep dive into feminist theory. I would add that another angle to look at domestic work is through queer relationships because it challenges traditional gender roles as well. My partner and I are both queer and trans. We have 2 elementary age kids. I'm a trans man and I work a typically masculine job doing manual labour. My partner is non-binary and a teacher. Because I start work early in the morning I get home around midday and I take care of most of the house work. When my partner and kids come home in the evening we cook dinner and take care of the kids together.
Growing up I watched my mum do everything for my dad and for my sister and I. And since I was sociallized to learn so called women's work, I learned how to clean and take care of a space. Now that I'm in my thirties and see cis men my age that can't perform simple household tasks, I find domestic skills to be extremely valuable.
A balanced summary. So much goes unsaid in the context of expectations, I feel.
In a system that attempts to appraise and quantify all work and production, little value is attributed to those who possess the power to maintain and replenish the status quo. Why does the traditional family model depend on reinforcing a dominant-submissive power dynamic?
Thought provoking as ever. Thank you Alice!
Was that a question here?
i love that dynamic music, reactions while maitaining kinda pure essay form
I think she needs to pan the camera out a bit more and show more of her gestures
I’m glad you finally arrived at the conclusion that housework should be socialized. This isn’t new. Angela Davis brought this up as an idea in her book _Women, Race_ and Class_ . We discussed that part of the book in my DSA reading group. I said it was a good idea, one that could break out of the gendered role that housework typically takes and instead potentially becomes a public sector job that everyone can do.
It could work in a real-world situation. For example, the UK’s National Health Service could provide social workers and cleaners for people struggling with postpartum or severe depression, hoarding, long-term disability, recovery from surgery, or just need someone to come by on a weekly basis to help clean the house.
Rather than look at this issue as a debate, maybe look at it as a collective conversation among a group of people who may not call themselves academics, activists, or even feminists (I do but not everyone does) coming together to advocate for better alternatives. Deconstruction is helpful. It helps us understand the current conditions we are living under. But people get stuck here because the work of reconstruction requires imagination, trust, and responsibility. But I believe when it comes to reconstruction, it is a group activity. We don’t have to figure it out alone.
Beautiful job Alice! Nothing is all black or white in your videos because there’s so much nuance in life 👏 and now my hard opinion on this:
Being a mom is probably the hardest job (if you care about raising your kids) I personally didn’t value moms as much before but after becoming one, I realize we did a terrible deal with men with the feminist movement. Or at least an incomplete job. Male born men don’t breastfeed and babies need their moms in a different way. The problem with feminism is that we gave away our rights to be moms and to be able to work under our terms. We are moms and have to work under men’s terms. Nowadays we glorify everything that relieves parents from parenting, for example: convincing our generation that daycare is just as good as parenting the first three years of a kid’s life. When we know the data differs
Another story - my male partner a few years ago worked from home and got domestic beneifts for anyone living in his household. He had me and a male friend. He declined to let us use these benefits even though it's very rare and sought after to have a job even offer help to your household without needing to be married or anything. He said it would feel too much like paying a housekeeper, to let me be on his work healthcare policy. Again ... i was his PARTNER and the other guy was his lifelong best friend. Benefits liek that don't come with most jobs here.
Don't worry I realized this dude was an abuser in other ways and left in 2018.
He had no transport expense or outdoor eating expenses, tf he means "too expensive"
Domestic labour is work. Important work. Work that deserves to be paid. Paying the tradwives is actually pretty radical - because it acknowledges the value of that work while also granting a degree of financial independence to the people performing it, which helps to mitigate the exploitative nature of the tradwive movement.
Yes please! This says so much, explains so much and would help so much.
It is a good solution in the same way UBI is a good solution: it improves working people’s lives but keeps the broken system relatively the same. So it is a good policy to support, not to advocate for.
The real solution is to make living free. This means free basic food, free housing, free healthcare etc. Alongside that, we need to communitise and raise children communally. But I agree that as long as it costs money to live, houseworkers should get paid.
Exactly right, we can work within the system to improve living conditions in the short term, while also working to dismantle the system in the long term through activism and advocacy. Too many people see it as an either/or, and I think that really holds things back.
UBI is a bad solution because it maintains capital as a social relation, otherwise I completely agree
ubi is bad because it can only be achieved by means of colonialism and imperialism @@cash_burner
I disagree. I think it's a good policy to advocate for, because we're not going to have a global revolution in our lifetimes that will fix all the world's problems. Yes, I will continue to organize and work in a way that will bring us closer to the communist utopian dream, but I will definitely also advocate for the policies that can make our lives better HERE AND NOW.
@@Sina-dv1eg I don't think the other solutions are much of a utopia. Free healthcare already exists in many countries. Housing first programs are free housing. Maybe they get a different branding, but I think universal basic needs will be implemented before UBI
I went to a panel with Dr. Fraser 3 days ago at my university, she’s incredibly knowledgeable on critical theory and now I’m getting all her books
Love the introspection and movement forward. It's easy to get stuck in the nitpicking of how individual trends are wrong, rather than moving on to solutions that could discourage that bad behavior in the first place. Thanks for exposing us to these ideas. You are our French Feminist Guru 😅
This was a good video. I'm glad you're kind of moving past the same old "men bad" rhetoric and focusing on "how the fuck do we fix those broken social dynamics?"
Yes, being a housewife means renouncing your power, your time and your agency for the well-being of your partner, children, and your relatives too. That's a vulnerable position to be in. And that was never an option for women, until recently. Now that it IS an option, in developed countries at least, I wonder how many women would trade their career opportunities for a basic "housework" income? I work in the healthcare field, and based on the women I know, I'd say: none of them. This is probably a good enough solution for women who couldn't get an education or a job for cultural/economic reasons, but when faced with the choice between a basic income for doing housework and an opportunity for a higher-paying career, most women would probably choose the latter. Before we could even discuss the concept of a basic housework income, we have to take a deep, hard look at how being a stay-at-home whatever under the system we live in is becoming less and less desirable or even feasible at all.
I agree with this. Most people would not trade their $30+/hr job for minimum wage doing housework and child rearing where they get no benefits, PTO, or scheduled breaks. On top of that, I don’t think even trad-wives would even accept a wage cuz their husbands are the ones who are expected to pay for everything. The tea-life is a gamble and often is not in favor of women, but we all have to make choices and accept the consequences of them. That’s why women usually choose to work for a bit or get a degree before becoming trad or a SAHM to offset the cons should things get bad. Giving them a wage is far to giving imo cuz those same considerations aren’t being given to women who pursue a career. I short housework will never be seen as legitimate over work in a capitalistic society, so people need to be smart about their decisions.
Neutrality often leads to silent condolence of the oppressor
Always, not often
I think youre confusing neutrality as a sort of politics with neutrality as an attempt to be unbiased. People do it a Lot, my dad being one of them. He falls into the Trap of treating "both Sides of the Argument" as equal even when they are very much Not. but He insists on treating them as the same Level, even when one is saying "climate Change increases the risk of draughts and fires in our country, we should probably try to mitigate it" and the other one says "but CO2 is good for plants" (yes, that happened, who needs water i guess...)
Striving for neutrality in journalism means being aware of your own biases and trying to not Fall into them, because it May prevent you from taking a proper look at the topic. Your conclusion shouldnt be "both Sides are right" but rather, "Here are the Arguments, this is where they come from, and HERE is why x and y are Not equally good Arguments"
Probably my favorite video yet! Great job!
This isn't just for women or Trad Wives, but for all genders and professions. Imagine a better world for all!
Bonjour, au sujet de l'article de presse de Ballerina Farm, la journaliste ne fait que décrire l'environnement de manière très concrète et simple, puis citer des phrases dites pendant l'interview sans donner un avis. C'est à nous de comprendre, de nous faire un avis. Elle a été justement incroyable avec cette prise de position littéraire et journalistique, avec des : fermer les guillemets et point, à tout bout de champs. Qui donnent un côté très "tout est dit pas besoin de rajouter quoique ce soit" à son article.
C'est dans son second article qu'elle déroule son point de vue, non dans le premier. Le premier est très descriptif, un peut sarcastique du coup, et joue sur le fait que tout est dit par les actions. Cet article est brillant ! Parce qu'il montre justement, sans rien dire, juste en décrivant, la situation wtf de cette femme et de cet endroit, et que qui veut voir et entendre, voit et entend.
Maybe if there are kids involved it would make sense but imagine these situations:
A and B are a married couple with both of them working a job for which they get €2,000 each. After they go home they do all the housework by themselves. Thus they barely have any free time.
C and D are also a married couple but only C works outside of the hombe, making €4,000. D stays at home and takes cares of the chores so C can get home and rest.
Now explain me why we should take money from A and B to pay D for work that doesn't benefit them at all?
Hey !
1. Domestic work, even without children, has an economic value. According to a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in 2017, unpaid domestic work in the United States is estimated to be worth around $1.2 trillion per year, a significant amount that reflects the value of these invisible but crucial contributions.
In 2015, a study by the Royal Economic Society estimated that women's domestic work in the United Kingdom was worth approximately 1 trillion British pounds per year, which represents around 56% of the UK's GDP.
2. Women, in their role as "caregivers" at home, also play a crucial role in reducing healthcare costs, not only for themselves and their children but also for their husbands. Women who provide caregiving at home (such as administering medications, managing medical appointments, and assisting with illnesses or injuries) can help avoid costly hospitalizations or medical treatments for their husbands. A study by the National Alliance for Caregiving (2015) estimated that informal care provided to aging or sick spouses saves billions of dollars each year in healthcare costs.
3. Moreover, a study by Harvard University in 2018 found that married men whose wives prepare balanced meals have a longer life expectancy and a reduced risk of heart disease compared to men who rely on takeout or a more sedentary lifestyle. This phenomenon can be attributed to the influence of home-cooked dietary habits, portion control, and the quality of ingredients.
4. All of this doesn’t take into account the European aspect and the billions of euros saved in social security. When you have a woman who has time and can take better care of the home than a woman who works long hours, they often end up not having health problems, whether moderate or serious, not having children-or having them later with risks to the woman's health and the fetus, divorce, poor home maintenance, which also leads to the degradation of property that is not good for the community, and no time for elderly people who end up languishing in nursing homes, nor for their children who will be raised on tablets and by nannies.
And yes, I’ve taken care of children in wealthy households with "girlboss" moms, who, despite doing less for their children, still did more than their husbands. Struggling, extreme fatigue, leading to kids addicted to tablets, throwing tantrums, because they are no longer properly raised. These women ( and men ) rarely had the chance to cook, thankfully, some husbands helped more with that. But often, it ended up with sandwiches. In the evening, the children ate alone in front of their tablets at 6 PM, frozen meals on luxury sofas. No meals were prepared, no family bonding, because the work was never finished, no parental presence, while the children constantly asked me why they never saw their parents. I’ve seen it, believe me.Believe me, I see nothing but this. But also because, factually, they are passionate and want to work, but this world is not designed to balance both, so they have to choose what to sacrifice and how. Eventually, she’ll want to divorce just to get some time for herself because society is asking the impossible of her at the expense of her body, her family, her husband, her job, her elderly parents, and so on.I was raised by a nanny and a mom who was a boss, whom I love. I only saw her once a week. She told me she had to put us to bed at 10-11 PM during the week just to make sure she could have at least one meal with us. She definitely did her best and was a true girlboss. But I was constantly crying for my nanny, not my mom. My parents worked so much that they had no patience when it came to raising me, like most do today. They used contempt or humiliation because it yielded better short-term results, and they didn’t have the time to do better (perhaps also the desire).And today, she doesn't know who I am, and our relationship is just fine.
Despite all of this, the woman will still have more work to do because she is always the one taking care of the house and the family. She has to work, deal with her menstrual cycles and hormonal changes to the point where she may have to suppress her periods just to fit into the work market designed and shaped for men's bodies.Giving them cancer etc
You will also see that household chores are shared when both have rather flexible hours, but this will not be the case in most situations, because statistically, men work more hours, at least in paid jobs. In contrast, women generally work more hours because they typically fill the gap in manual labor jobs, overtime, and the labor market that demands too much from one individual so they don’t have to hire two people. And the fact will always remain that it’s the woman who gets pregnant for 9 months, ( sometimes multiples times for more children )a period that will likely affect her career afterwards, that it’s she who will take care of the child the most, especially if she is breastfeeding, (Very often, women who work a lot, or work at all, decide not to breastfeed. I had to give them formula milk, even as a baby.) and that it’s the child who will mostly want their mother, which will prevent her from working those extra hours that men tend to take on. So today, it is impossible to say that household tasks are fairly shared and well done when both are working, and even worse when they have children. This world is not made for women's maternity and for the differences between men and women. There will always be roof tiles to replace properly to prevent the roof from degrading, a garden to take care of so you don't end up eating junk, annoying chores like descaling the shower so it doesn't deteriorate and need to be replaced in three years, etc. All these tasks are pushed to later when, for most workers who work more than 35 hours a week, it’s difficult to find the time, and spending one of your two days off cleaning the house rather than spending time for yourself or with your family is a challenge.
A stay-at-home mom, even without children, contributes billions every year by properly taking care of the adults who work and live longer in the workforce. She will take care of her children without relying on daycare most of the time and will care for others much more easily than a woman working outside the home who is trying to juggle all the roles society expects her to fulfill.
Because, as you said, if A and B are supposed to do the work, the problem is that B doesn’t do it. B doesn’t do the work and never has had to.
I don't agree with paying for domestic work. This seems like a liberal solution to maintain the dichotomy of reproductive work as a woman's thing, and productive work as a man's thing. The radical solution would be to work less and earn better wages, so that we have time and conditions to do the reproductive work, equally, involving all adults in a home. At least it is what I've learned with the socialist feminists, which are not so much popular anymore
Except that this doesn’t take into account the differences between men and women, and thus the inequalities that today weigh on society. To the point that women no longer want children, no longer breastfeed, and no longer have the time to educate, etc. It’s not the men that the children call for; they’re not the ones breastfeeding, carrying children for nearly a year, or several years if they have multiple children, which then directly impacts their career. The simple fact that a woman has children is already at odds with the idea of a 50/50 system. If a woman decides to genuinely care for a child as science suggests (breastfeeding up to age 2-3, spending 3 hours a day with the child for bonding through only interaction and play from ages 0 to 5, short nights, dedicated devotion, etc.), if we really wanted to make this possible, women would work barely 15 to 20 hours a week. You will also see that household chores are shared when both have rather flexible hours, but this will not be the case in most situations, because statistically, men work more hours, at least in paid jobs. In contrast, women generally work more hours because they typically fill the gap in manual labor jobs, overtime, and the labor market that demands too much from one individual so they don’t have to hire two people.
And I’m sure there are women who wouldn’t thrive in that role, and the choice should always be available. But just the fact that we experience hormonal fluctuations-which, for one-third of women, makes work uncomfortable or even worrying for two weeks every month, sometimes for months on end (as is the case for me)-shows clearly that society isn’t made for us, but for men. Most of us have to suppress our menstrual cycles just to keep working. Take away your pill or implant, and you’ll see how tiring life really is when the body has to create hormones naturally in a world polluted by endocrine disruptors, which have impacted an entire generation of women. One-third of us have hormonal issues, including endometriosis, PCOS, etc. Being a woman in a society made for men should come with compensation-compensation for our bodies, our health, and for the fact that we bring life into the world at the expense of promotions and extraordinary careers.
The real problem lies in your explanations. If we give women in the home the opportunity to earn money, I quote: "This means that men are productive and women, what do you do, just reproduce." The idea that being productive is better than conceiving is just as misogynistic as the men of the past. Accepting women for who they are is truly feminist, accepting career woman AND woman at home is truly feminist. And the work it involves is far harder than any career. The experience of men who try to stay at home and take care of the children has shown that they find it more difficult than their own jobs (engineer, architect, mason, etc.).Because we can be who we want to be, but in a productivity-driven society, doing both requires either sacrificing both or sacrificing one. And given the generations I work with, I see where the sacrifice is being made. Thinking that we are war machines meant to destroy our health as we are asked to today is disgusting. We are in competition with men who do not have to procreate, have much more testosterone, and whose hormonal fluctuations do not disrupt their lives, are more stronger etc. They need less sleep per night to function (7 to 8 hours for men and 9 to 10 hours for women to function normally), which, of course, doesn’t fit with what society has shaped for us. Our brains are also different from birth, even in the embryo. While much comes from what we acquire, there is also an innate part that feminism wants to eliminate in order to idealize a truth that does not exist.
The fact is, there will inevitably be women who want to raise their children as best as possible, in a clean environment, with homemade dinners and snacks-not just Kinder bars and frozen food at 6 p.m. in front of a tablet. In practice, this is real work, and not paying these women leaves them vulnerable to men who have always known how to leverage their power. You give them 2-3 children, they potentially lose their job, the long break makes it hard to get back into the workforce, and they end up trapped, dependent on their husbands. This is especially true for disadvantaged women who didn’t have access to education.
In concrete terms, work must be compensated. Any work that contributes to society deserves a salary, and raising the next generation is undoubtedly one that should come with a solid annual wage. Women must finally reclaim the money that allowed empires to be built after years of slavery and widespread ra^e. We must reclaim our power of reproduction.
I can understand why some women decide to stay home. Especially when you consider the billions of euros they bring to society every year. Fortunately, they’re here, without question.
I loved all of the editing on this one. You did an exceptional job, and it truly tied together the whole presentation. Thank you for all of your efforts in sharing your philosophical insights with us.
I'm surprised that you did not go one step further and conclude to the necesity for UBI. All your development was ponting to it. Being members of the working class, we are the one doing the work. All the work, domestic included. Because of that we deserve wages, regardless of what we chose to do. If your are not already familiar with it, I suggest you look at Bernard Friot work about that.
Amazing video analysis of this issue, loved the academic references you made :)
The Trad wife is a weird American thing. Most of history everyone was working or contributing in some role relative to their class. 😂
The problem is that those traditional wives didn't have financial security or any assets, the same as now, no pension, no savings account, no disability insurance, no salary, no paid vacation and no maximum working hours. Just a sex slave with a different name.
The average marriage in my country until the 80s: husband and wife do the same job in their landlord's field, husband gets drunk and has bastards, wife does household chores until a daughter is old enough to raise the nine siblings, and each subsequently beats someone smaller.
Americans get to play retvrn.
The "trad wife" is a snapshot of the american society from the mid 20th century. It was never "trad".
It’s not. I’m Mexican, and we have our own version of tradwives. The thing is what is considered “traditional” varies culture to culture. For example, in Japan, traditional women are in charge of the finances. In America, they are notoriously.
I wish this video would include some analysis from Soviet feminist from the early 1930s and '40s that called for the abolishment of the traditional family and a move towards communal child rearing that liberated women and people capable of giving birth from the burden of child rearing. Early communist China had very similar feminist ideas about this as well.
Great video Alice! I often found myself pausing to think about what you said, then when I hit play you would bring up an idea or paper which perfectly matched my thoughts!
I think you hit the nail on the head at the end of the video. We can't look at it solely through a gendered lens as we would have to pay the house husbands as well as the housewives. If we do not pay housework evenly between the genders, this further solidifies the womans role in the household as the caretaker. As such, it is as you said at the end of the video, we need to look at this issue from a broader societal perspective of necessary unpaid labour.
In general, the idea does make me a little uneasy. It does feel as though we are subsuming more of our social and domestic life into Capitalism if we do this. I know you mention that the social structure that supports Capitalism must be analysed as part of the system but I still feel that paying for housework moves us negative direction. At work, I have to feel out timesheets to ensure things are billed properly, I have to follow certain procedures and rules as to what I can and cannot do. I feel that by paying housework wages, we invite this kind of oversight and regulation into our home, as we are being paid, we may have to follow rules or regulations to receive that pay. This for me makes the idea of changing the culture so that men are expected (and do) more housework more appealing.
I know you'll never read this but it was still a good opportunity to solidify my thoughts.
PS: I learned this video that we are the same age, wasn't expecting that!
I think this, especially the closing remarks, can be understood as a advocacy for a livable uninersal basic income. Considering that our planet and the people working on it produce enough to provide every single person on it with food, clothes, housing, healthcare and education, it doesn't seem unreasonable.
Unless, of course, we think, it's fair that some people take such a big chunk of goods and services that there isn't enough for the rest. but we're not f***g a**hole neoliberals, are we?
I enjoyed this analysis, but I was disappointed that New Zealand's Marilyn Waring wasn't referenced at all, as a key founder of Feminist Economics, and author of "If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics" (1988). It is an important and influential book!
Such an important topic, thank you. Would have loved to hear you talk about family abolition as well :))
I think the individualistic model of society started to become problematic, contradictory, and exploitative around the time that men decided they didn't care what happened to children who weren't their own and women they weren't fucking. I think that ethos underlies a lot of the criticism of gender roles and the nuclear family within modern capitalism you discuss in this video. The problem is that we've increasingly over-indexed for centuries on competition and rational self interest as somehow being the sole natural impetus for social welfare, and the system is buckling under the contradictions within that reasoning.
What about women who don't give a flying f about others kids and other men and women who aren't as privileged as them? Why is this a men issue in particular you men hating misandrist?
They don’t even like the kid that’s theirs as well 😂
@Alanalan12297 I'm talking more from an anthropological origin perspective rather than about specific cases or statistics. Before birth control, before industry, right at the inception of the concept of land ownership, people who could get pregnant and nurse were intrinsically vulnerable in a way that people who used them for procreation leveraged to structure society in such a way as to regard certain humans as commodities.
@Dave102693 For real...
wait, why would people trying to take care of children who aren't theirs? especially if they aren't getting anything out of it?
All those who freak out about demographic decline should really consider this yes.
I mean, if they were logical, consistent and honest about their views, of course.
this doesn’t even seem like a utopian ideal, people would argue scale but something’s got to give because the current systems arent working regardless.
I know where I live for example has (not perfect but still) programs that subsidize and pay full time family caretakers for the elderly and disabled. There is a general shortage of in home caretakers and insufficiency in the in patient care . it’s a logical help for both an industry that is burnt out and family members to not have to choose between caregiving or an income.
I think giving an allowance/welfare to the unemployed makes a lot of sense to me, and I believe we have that available already in the country I live in. I do have questions about implementing an allowance for the reason of "paying for housework". Mainly, how does one become eligible for it?
-for example, what about families where both parents work? They will still need to clean their house somehow, and arguably they may have even less time to do it, esp if they don't earn enough to hire housekeepers. Will they be eligible for the benefit?
-for many 'trad' households or even households where the people own the house, it can be argued that they are more well-off because they own capital (their house). So can they still claim the benefit, or will it only be available for renters/people who don't own their homes?
-how much housework is translatable for the amount of benefit you can receive? Will a bigger houses give more benefit?
-what is the standard of living expected to be eligible for the benefit? Ideally you should clean your house often, but normally you can let a house get dirty for a few days without adverse health effects. So how to measure the acceptable quality of life to justify needing the benefit?
If we want to ignore all of these details and just say "every household should receive a benefit" then I think that's just UBI right? Which I completely support btw. But yeah keen to know exactly how this policy should be best structured to help the people who need it most and be fair
If the goal is to reduce the power imbalance between the unemployed and the employed, then whatever the wage for housework is should be paid in its entirety to the party who doesn't have a regular income otherwise. Extrapolating from that it should probably be shared between couples scaling on how equal their wage hours are until they are paid equally for working the same hours outside the home, with the expectation that the couple will share housework proportionally to how many hours they themselves work.
Not getting paid for housework shouldn't be a deterrent from home ownership, so home owners should be paid the same as renters. Yes, it does benefit a lot of people who might not be in need, but it would also incentivise people to get out of landlord relationships to discourage landlord businesses and could be the push some people need in making the decision of buying. Perhaps scaling the wage to home size on some margin because obviously handling a larger home is more work.
I don't think there should be a set standard to get the wage. There will always be people who think they can "game" the system by living in more squalor, but they're doing that already and paying for it wouldn't change that. Although perhaps there could be a bonus for a good enough job, but I don't know how that could be justly enforced without invasions of privacy.
Hi. I like what you have to say here and support UBI, too. I think the questions you ask are both good and fair. The subject matter is a little different than different forms of social welfare (a term that I do not apply a negative denotation or connotation to), but the questions you ask and the questions of means testing relative to social welfare in the form of monetary distribution are somewhat similar. While all these questions have to do with fairness (which makes some sense), do they best address the solutions towards human equality and the ability to survive and flourish collectively (we want that, correct?)? Do we have to remain within the capitalist paradigm which creates a context for means testing? Are resources on this planet so limited that scarcity doesn't allow for a different paradigm or more mutually beneficial socio-economic system? I would answer "no" to these questions (except the one in parentheses), but that is my perspective. Is it yours, too? I think for UBI to ultimately be successful, it would not only have to provide for people to subsist with a sense of dignity, but also provide the material requirements for people to recognize each in their dignity (i.e. a shared sense of mutual respect). I think this is a possibility, but only within the logic of a society/public engaged in a non-zero sum game of existence where means testing wouldn't make a lot of sense... but maybe you understand things more clearly and can help my understanding... that's one of the goals here, right? Anyway, thanks for your initial reply to the video-essay. Very solid and your head and heart seem to be moving in a positive direction from my vantage. Even if I don't hear from you again here, take care and best of luck
The "regeneration" angles are really interesting, since they open up the field to include conversations on leisure, mental health, inclusion, childhood, adolescence, elderls...
While we're talking imperatives, I say we should decommodify everything, so everyone - wives, husbands, and children - can get what they need (as determined by their demands and workers) regardless of surplus value.
Alice your hair is looking gorgeous.
Wonderful video, as always! Been watching for a long while, and every video is always super clear, entertaining and provides great insight and authors to follow up on!
In my uneducated opinion, to deconstruct gender roles is to deconstruct capitalism, to deconstruct capitalism is to deconstruct gender roles. To attempt to do one without the other will never work. Dissolving the boundaries of a lot of current class structures is inevitable, but only when all classes, both existing and potential, are pared down to their essence and defined with a clear disambiguation between fiction and the actual metrically measurable qualities of each differentiated class, with the comparable negatives and positives listed and sorted, will a system more profitable to capitalism than capitalism itself emerge.
Excellent. Masterfully assesed
Super interesting concept, stay at home parents definitely deserve more recognition/support/value. I’m a working mum and lately dream of being a stay at home mum, even just for a couple of years. I never thought I would want to do that, but I can now see how it could bring real value to my family and my life experience.
A few thoughts - my other half helps with the house work, he likes to contribute and I think it makes him feel needed in the household. I wonder would a housework wage discourage the ‘go to work’ parent from helping out? Maybe the kids could also use this excuse to not do their chores…? Could it feel like a trap or too much pressure in a way, it could open the ‘stay to work’ person to criticism and it would be a difficult situation to quit.
Also, regards be paid to give birth; could being paid to create future workers (children) mean people choose to have kids, for society or for money, and not for themselves, which is the way it should be I believe.
There is also a lot of logistical questions, who would actually pay this wage, etc? I’m not against the idea at all, it definitely should be given some serious thought so it doesn’t create other problems, like more oppression for women. Could be fantastic if it worked though.
haven’t watched the vid yet but i can tell you, UBI is the answer.
Your videos always offer new ways to think about complicated subjects 👍
I really like this! Thank you!
Alice, kudos on your 100th video.
Some ideas of compensating are relevant. Many western European governments provide a lot of child daycare subsidies. And every time (although less children are born), those government costs rise. In addition, parents still also have to pay a lot of their wages towards those day care situations. Then we create child care studies in high school (minimum 4 years), but those children when they receive their diploma, they have to compete with labour immigrants who only need to follow an 8-week course to do the same work. So many of those high school graduate chose another job. Then we complain that language skills deteriorate of children as they are partly in day care centres where 80% has low local language knowledge. Then we have to subsidize other organisations that deal with adjusting the deteriorated skills of children. More specialized teachers. Also, a phenomenon there are fewer children, but we have the highest amount of teachers in history. And they always have a shortage of teachers. Then kindergarten teachers complain that children of three years are way behind their level (that they are becoming daycare centres). So that means the argument daycare is better for development children is better is failing.
I'm still stuck on learning how young you are. I've been watching you for years! So wise and yet apparently so young
Alice Cappelle posted, life is good 🙏🏼 (love the editing btw)
Well, goverments usually give subsidies or tax exemptions to families. That is economically giving money to the creators of the labour force. It just doesn't differentiate between partners.
It would be amazing if tradwife content creators help normalize payment for domestic labour. Go tradwives!
I usually fixate on the cultural trappings and political bias that goes with the discourse around them, but I would love if this is something we could get a bit of cooperation with along the political spectrum. I think centering the discussion around women to start will help the movement gain much more traction as it's a lot easier to understand for the average person.
Also I'm not gonna lie, at 18:00-ish when Alice discussed the journalist's bias towards Ballerina Wife I was preparing myself for a Ground News plug, it sounded like the perfect setup for it and it just never came lol
Great video! Really food for thought
This is a common conversation I have with women on all ends of the political spectrum, it's always seemed out of reach, but it might just end up being a rising tide, especially as both parties seem driven towards incentivizing child-rearing in the USA.
Very informative video Alice!! Very truthful things said in this video!!
Per usual I like this video and many of the perspectives and activities that it advocates. In a nutshell, understanding that pretty much all activity, especially labor and all the activities that constitute as labor (the main focus here being what tends to be termed as domestic labor), adds/contributes to social production within (and/or makes up) the political economy is accurate (imo). This understanding provides a basis for recognizing the equality and basic human dignity that is shared and should be shared among people (i.e. all individuals), and thereby can, does and would alter the inequalities of power within interpersonal relationships (sorry, I am drawing broad generalizations, in part to be brief in order to get to my point) that are manifested through hierarchies of identity that are expressed latently from social hegemony. I guess what I find somewhat strange (not a value judgment, just a sense of novelty, I guess) and possibly problematic with the practical solutions provided here (I am not against them, but that doesn't mean I don't want to look at them through a critical lens to try and gauge their possible efficacy and potential implications) is the possible quantification by means of currency and, therefore, monetization of all activity. Is everything I do, think and say able to be monetized? If I eat an apple, then I create a lack of an apple, so if I want nourishment in the future through an apple, I would have to procure it through currency which I gain through labor... so, even my consumption is an act of social production. Do we as people want to quantify all of our actions into currency? Is everything a commodity or a financial transaction? Is this perspective of transactionality the only means to realize the ends of human equality? I don't know. I think these are things we have to decide collectively, and this video is a part of that conversation, which is great. I guess I am ultimately curious if similar ends of human equality could be achieved through universal basic income, (or maybe a c,ombination of ubi with income for both "traditional" labor and the labor of "social reproduction"). Again these seem like questions that should be answered collectively, but have to admit on a personal level, I balk a bit at the idea of quantifying everything. Money and power are matters of the most serious and important consideration relative to how they affect people's lives, but if all life is is money and power, why live it?
I think UBI is also a good solution to this problem. I'm a guy and I've been saying this for a while on my channel.
Watching this amazing video at the gym
This is the most Alice title
wonderful essay, thank you
Libérée, délivrée, maintenant je vais être payée
loved the editing!
I only see one solution that would work in this case. A state provided base income, that you only get if you do not have a job or if you don't earn a certain amount.
This would be financed by a fund that collects money from companies for every worker. It's more if the company pays workers too little or massively more, and it's more if workers have to work too much.
Basically you could tweak it in a way that everybody has time to do their fair share of unpaid work and also get the companies to pay everyone a living wage and not overcompensate certain rolls.
This would automatically lead to less social friction due to certain people earning millions while other doing a system relevant job and just barely getting through the month...
The main issue I have with wages for housework is that it misunderstands things about capitalism that marx had pointed out all the way back. The relationship between the role of women and that of men is not that women are exploited by men but that women are oppressed by men and both are exploited by capital who reenforces said oppression. We often talk about how women are pushed into ALL reproductive labor but in turn men are pushed into ALL productive labor. Capital functions with the family as the smallest family unit hence why in the wage of the man is hidden the wage of the domestic wife. A wage for house work would simply result in making that partition obvious and give women control over their share which would be a step in one direction however it would not be in the direction of an actual solution. What would happen instead is what you see today with women entering the workforce (which is a good thing) they came out of the reserve army of labor and both genders start more and more doing both productive and reproductive labor while competing for the wages of productive labor. It literally means now what was previously a unit doing 40hours of labor and the same in reproductive now has become to units doing the same amount of reproductive labor (assuming they are not living by themselves independently which would mean twice as much) while also doing twice the amount of productive labor as both work full time while also the capitalist can drive wages even lower because competition is greater. It's why we have seen a rise in cohabitation. We are still getting trapped in familial relations on the reproductive front just no longer hereditary ones meanwhile getting exploited even harder. Hence why you can't emancipated the reproductive worker without emancipating the working class in general. And all this assuming you could actually make it happen, the question of power and who could actually make the domestic wage a thing and whether they would be willing has not at all been tackled cause if it was you would realize that it would require basically revolution and then if you already got that far might as well build socialism
I'd like to comment and idea of Kathi Weeks from her work "The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries" about de housework pay: she interpreted the movement not like a real demand but like a provocation in order to illuminate the intersections between patriarchy and wage-labour capitalism. In the case of a housework salary: who will pay the salary? The husband? The state? A corporation? This doesn't matter because the objective as a provocation, as Kathi Week interpreted, is not to integrate the housework to the chains of valorization under the capitalims but to put light over the differential exploitation of women and why is necessary for the capitalism reproduction and the exploitation of wage labor itself, at the the same time (and also, in a more academic approach, talk about how social sciences tended to ignore the housework and women explotation, and its importance in society, and how this had done bad for the inteligibility of our social structures moreover if the inteligibility is oriented to political action)
Yo great vid, but maybe better as an introduction of the UBI issue and a much needed rethinking of everyone's social contracts into smt that ultimately can throw aside gender, race, age and so on and produce a post-rat race society with a more balanced life philosophy to help people be more driven to having more daily roles in all fields, education, sports, politics, social (in and outside of family), arts, and yes even work, all in relation to our place in the world as its inhabitants. Then maybe we could have a chance in taking to the stars... without fucking it all up ofc. I'd love a video like that.
Great video as always, Alice! Probably could have been an hour long tbh. Love how you managed to fit in gender roles at the end.
The whole video, I was thinking that if, hypothetically, we started recognizing the value of domestic work in the larger economy juuuust as soon as men start doing more of it, that would be pretty on-brand for humanity (giving “if men got pregnant, you could get an abortion at an ATM”). But hey, progress is progress 😅
another banger video
HAPPY 100TH VIDEO!!
Here in Brazil one of the conservatives jargons is something like "in defense of the family". They are very active and loud here, when talking about family often advocating against feminism and the LGBT+. Now watching this it makes so much sense and the people who reproduce this idea definitely have no idea where it comes from and who it benefits.
You can't pay someone for taking care of their family in the literal sense - ie get a monthly cheque, but there is a definitely merit in govt' supporting the family unit more which many governments do via tax breaks, credits for various social services etc. and many govt's aim to do more.
No, but a woman who works 10+ hours a day in domestic labor, 7 days a week without a salary, without weekends off, without vacation days, no pension, no savings account, that's a modern slave but with society approval, and on top of that giving birth to the children of her owner, risking her life (literally) and with the final outcome of getting divorced and without official working experience.
@@Valentina.MontanoIt really makes some people stuck in situations that they might not want to be in and have no way to get out of.
@@Valentina.Montano I am not sure what your point is, it is in no way modern day slavery when it is a CHOICE. No one forces you to be a trad wife or have kids, paying people for their life choices is a slippery slope. Who is supposed to pay them and how much?
@@aduad That’s why I can’t get behind this. Every choice has a consequence whether it be positive or negative. In trad-relationships the husband is supposed to pay for everything. If he is unable to, then sorry, but trad-life may not be for that couple. We can’t always get what we want and for a lot of people trad-life is just a desire. It’s not realistic and it’s not on the government or tax payers to make people’s fantasies come true.
Declining birth rate would be interesting to include in this analysis - is there now 'less' housework as a result? Interesting vid.
Well, not necessarily. I had my first exactly at the same age as my mom had her first. But She had retired granparents! One of my grans was a Stay at home and the other a teacher, retired after 35 years of service, meaning, late 40s. She also had a house (payed By the grandparents ) and wage gaps between educated more and less educated people was bigger than today. Meaning, I dont get the help She did, and also, i cant afford the extra labor She could and did. Even if i had less kids, my domestic labor is larger, due to my parents being the "sandwich" generation: still working AND caring for their aging parents. So lack of community, one of the well know features of today society means less sharing of child rearing too.
@@anamp1322 thanks for those thoughts, I'd agree about the sharing of labour (village to bring up a child and all that)
génialissime
My country doesn't have enough facilities for older people and so there is talk about paying family members who take on the caring. My head almost blew up because what is so different between that and child care? There is also a lack of child care. But no one wants to pay a mom.
Great content!
All labor is worthy of wages, including domestic labor in the home and childcare
It is, but if the relationship is truly “traditional” that wage is supposed to be take care of by the husband.
@@tiahnarodriguez3809 LOL, 'traditionally' it was not. Y'all just know your history. Traditionally, women were subhuman property. You don't pay your lamp for lampin'
It would be interesting to see how something like UBI would shift the house work/gender dynamics/other related capitalism aspects.
I do agree with most of the concepts of this video, but I feel a very important argument was actually left out. At least around me there is a growing tendency of husbands doing a lot of domestic labor. It is not clear to me how it is possible to actually measure and pay respectively each party. There are families in which the woman both works full time and covers for most of the domestic labor. There are cases like my family, my husband cares for the kids more than I do, I do more plannings, chores, etc. The complexity of the situations somehow makes it hard to put into a frame driving wages.
hi alice!
just wanted to point out that the ch in 'battacharya' is not 'k' but 'tsh'.
great video btw, thank you!
❤
Hi Alice! I love that you have music in the back of this video, it really sets the mood, but could you please in the next video just lower the volume a tiny bit? I find it a little bit distracting :) Thanks for an interesting video as always!
Eva Duarte de Perón enters the chat.
Yes, I think she " mandate" or "support a decree" really do´nt know the details , but during her leaderchip in Argentina the house wives were paid ....
@@em-wt3thyeeees Evita ❤
Alice on a Friday let's gooooooo
Am open to the domestic work being paid. But the frustrating thing is the gap between the working class and middle class, and the upper class in this regard.
Upper class, hired servants to help them, most of the financial decisions in the home are done by the stay at home spouse with the single income earner having less choice in the decision about allocation of their income besides maybe one hobby room or outside activity.
Now go back to working class and middleclass. Hard to have a single income earning household and would the pay for the domestic household tasks come from the main earner? Because then it is effectively a tight squeeze and having a single income earning family becomes unaffordable. And dual income which is the norm in the uk involves compromises in all the domestic and home duties between the higher income earner and the lower income earner. With that compromise affecting time spent with their children teaching educating and bonding with them.
They cant pay externally for domestic chores to be done so its compromises all the way down
Not sure whwt the solution for this is besides it having a chilling affect on working and middleclass people wanting to have families.
Wonder whether parenting can similar be commodified into an economic model. It starts to get a bit iffy
Social reproduction theory does sound interesting though