History of Feminism
Related: About this forumAt work as at home, men reap the benefits of women’s “invisible labor”
This is an issue that reveals the ugly truth about sexism as a norm that affects all women in adverse ways on a daily basis. One that men benefit from - even men like myself, who generally have good intentions and recognize that sexism is an urgent, systemic issue.
For these gendered patterns and norms are absolutely ingrained into us from the day we're born, by our parents, our peers, our relatives, our media, and our culture in general. And oftentimes, it's not even intentional. It's just the assumed, "default" position...which in many ways, is more pervasive and insidious than conscious misogyny.
On any given day, one fifth of men in the US, compared to almost half of all women do some form of housework. Each week, according to Pew, mothers spend nearly twice as long as fathers doing unpaid domestic work. But while it’s important to address inequality at home, it’s equally critical to acknowledge the way these problems extend into the workplace. Women’s emotional labor—which can involve everything from tending to others’ feelings to managing family dynamics to writing thank-you notes—is a big issue that’s rarely discussed.
In the early 1980s, University of California, Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild coined the term “emotional labor” in her book The Managed Heart. Hochschild observed that women make up the majority of service workers—flight attendants, food service workers, customer service reps—as well as the majority of of child-care and elder-care providers. All of these positions require emotional effort, from smiling on demand to prioritizing the happiness of the customer over one’s own feelings.
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This is an inherently sexist dynamic, and—for women of color—an implicitly racist one. Professional black and Hispanic women, subjected to a sort of double jeopardy in corporate situations, report being regularly mistaken for cleaning ladies and janitors.
The time women spend on these necessary but unrecognized chores taxes their energy, undermines their workplace authority, and reduces the time they could be spending on more socially and professionally recognized and valued work.
http://qz.com/599999/at-work-as-at-home-men-reap-the-benefits-of-womens-invisible-labor/
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Iliyah
(25,111 posts)
ismnotwasm
(42,624 posts)
brer cat
(26,879 posts)
SunSeeker
(55,322 posts)And my husband insists he's a feminist. Both my husband and I work full time in demanding professional jobs. But I have an additional full time job---and he doesn't. It's not like he insists I do this work, but if I didn't do it, it wouldn't get done. That includes all the little niceties of life, from organizing birthday parties, to sending out Christmas cards, to keeping my son's goldfish alive.
KitSileya
(4,035 posts)go to the enormous metafilter thread that the article "Where's My Cut?" inspired.
http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emotional-Labor
It is epic, and awesome, and eye-opening, and possibly life-changing. It should be mandatory reading for all young teenagers.
(In my social studies class, when we were discussing why women have more absences from work than men, and the boys in class were arguing that men were taking their share of the household chores, I used emotional labor as an example of why women are triple-working, not just double, and perhaps feel overwhelmed at times. The boys conceded, and hopefully I opened the eyes of the girls as well.)
YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)
