Nuances in the Politics of Demand for Outsourced Housecleaning

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-82
Author(s):  
Lotika Singha
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Relationship Quality ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
Women's Emancipation ◽  
Household Labour ◽  
Status Enhancement ◽  
Risk Reducing

This chapter interrogates the ‘need’ to outsource domestic cleaning, alongside implications for gender equality and relationship quality in the outsourcing household. It argues that ‘need’ is not directly related to affluence or status enhancement. The analysis of division of household labour when cleaning is outsourced shows that there is still plenty of housework for service-users to do themselves, particularly tidying up or ‘picking up’ after others. Sharing of this task could aid in progressing gender equality despite the outsourcing of cleaning. In this, if (middle-class) women do not see cleaning as their work, they will not expect (middle-class) men to undertake it either. The chapter concludes that claims of outsourced cleaning pitting the liberation of one class/race of women against that of another risk reducing women’s emancipation to freedom from housework and naturalising housework as women’s work.

The Ford Sewing machinists’ strike, Dagenham, 1984–85

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-163
Author(s):  
Jonathan Moss
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
New Era ◽  
Female Workers ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
The Way

This final chapter returns to Ford, Dagenham to analyse the second strike that was organised by female sewing-machinists for skill recognition in the winter of 1984-1985. Whilst the 1968 strike analysed in chapter 2 was optimistically hailed as a turning point symbolising a new era of gender equality, the sewing-machinists were dissatisfied because the skilled nature of their work was not recognised. For the women at Ford, the underlying grading grievance and the sense of injustice that led to the 1968 dispute continued to shape their experiences of work and trade unionism for the next 17 years. This dispute marks an appropriate place to begin to draw some broader conclusions about women’s experiences of workplace activism between 1968 and 1985. The Ford sewing-machinists’ eventual success in winning their grading intimates a transition had occurred in the way women’s work was valued in the intervening 17 years between the strikes – at least within the Ford factory. Drawing upon contemporary representations of the dispute and interviews with women involved, this final chapter considers whether the women themselves believed the strike represented a change in attitudes towards female workers.

scholarly journals Sonallah Ibrahim and Miriam Naoum’s Zaat

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-40
Author(s):  
Sara Salem
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
Masculinity And Femininity ◽  
Financial Pressure ◽  
And Gender

Abstract This article explores the television adaptation of Sonallah Ibrahim’s novel Zaat, arguing that the series provides us with an interesting representation of the various ways in which national projects in Egypt are gendered. It adds to feminist debates around nationalism, capitalism, and gender. In particular, the focus on the intimate in Zaat reveals how political projects are depicted in the domestic sphere through the lens of women’s work. The article explores two themes: one, the increasing financial pressure and its effects on constructs of masculinity and femininity, and two, the steady decay of infrastructure and social services and how it renders middle-class life an impossibility. The article argues that by focusing on the intimate, Ibrahim’s novel and the TV adaptation both reveal the various forms of work women perform and make use of women’s work to critique or celebrate national projects.

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