THE
POLITICS OF HOUSEWORK

Life sentence
Debbie Taylor argues that women are slaves to domestic work. And that men must help set them free.

HOUSEWORK MYTHS

On nagging
Reformed nagger Juliet Kellner looks back on years of lonely protest.

Doin' wot comes nat'rally
If a job is done by a woman it is automatically classed as unskilled, according to Anne Phillips.

Where there is no hoover
Rural women get a better deal than urban housewives. A report from Zimbabwe by Yvonne St Clare.

Passing the buck
Judith Ramirez talks to NI about the revival of the slave trade in Canada.

HOUSEWORK - THE FACTS

Wages for housework
Zoë Fairbairns wonders why feminists would rather pay a cleaner than insist that men help with the housework.

OCCUPATION: HOUSEWIFE
Job description, pay and conditions.

No time to spare
Ben White summarizes the research on how women in the Third World spend their time.

Sunrise, sunset
One woman's day in the Philippines by Julie Eastwood.

Is he house-trained?
Ben McNaughton argues that men who don't clear up in the home are the major polluters of our planet.

SIMPLY: Evolution of the Housewife

'I'm doing an issue of the NI on housework.'

'On what?'

'Housework.' Silence.

'Ironing shirts, cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors?'

'Yes.'

'Hoovering, shopping, cooking, dusting, changing diapers?'

'You got it.'

Until here people's reactions were pretty standard. But here they began to deviate. This is the point where smiles started to nudge at the corners of women's mouths. The smiles stretched into grins, then into full-bodied laughter. 'At last. Ammunition!' they said finally, still chuckling. 'Wait till I show it to my husband/lover/flatmate/kids.'

Men, on the other hand, were more ambivalent. 'Is this one of those NIs I'll have to hide from Martha?' asked one guardedly, glancing nervously over his shoulder. Others questioned whether the topic of housework was serious enough to merit an entire issue of the magazine. 'After all, it's hardly a matter of life and death', they commented. This last point was easy to answer, as I hope the facts will demonstrate. Women's responsibility for housework is the major reason for inequality between the sexes. That makes this topic very serious indeed.

On the other point, though - about hiding it from Martha, or whoever - I was left in a bit of a quandary. Because it was quite clear from the women's reactions that the men's somewhat paranoid responses were justified. The women obviously hoped to use the facts and arguments in the magazine to support their case for more help around the house. That they should still require support of this kind is evidence of the incredible reluctance of even politically astute men to grasp the nettle of domestic work.

Yet the benefits for women of being relieved of a proportion of their domestic burden are so enormous that it's difficult to see how men can knowingly withhold such salvation from people they claim to love. But perhaps men's salvation is in the balance too, as Harry Chapin demonstrates:

My child arrived just the other day;
he came to the world in the usual way.
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay;
he learnt to walk while I was away.
And he was talkin' 'fore I knew it,
and as he grew he'd say, '
I'm gonna be like you, Dad,
you know I'm gonna be like you.

I've since retired, my son's moved away;
I called him up just the other day.
I said 'I'd like to see you, if you don't mind'.
He said 'I'd love to Dad, if I can find the time'.
And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me,
he'd grown up just like me;
my boy was just like me.

How about it, brothers? It would make such a huge difference to us all.

Letters
Letter from China
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: by Richard Swift
Reviews: Film, music, books, plus classic
Country profile: Netherland Antilles

COVER PHOTO: Barry Lewis / Network
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