But how many of these men have liberated themselves from the assumption that housework is women’s work'? How many of them would not characterise their housecleaning activities as “helping” their women partners? Already, more men have begun to assist their partners around the house, some of them even devoting equal time to household chores. The new consciousness associated with the contemporary women’s movement has encourages increasing numbers of women to demand that their men provide some relief from this drudgery. Housework, after all, is virtually invisible: “No one notices it until it isn’t done – we notice the unmade bed, not the scrubbed and polished floor.' Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative – these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework. Just as a woman’s maternal duties are always taken for granted, her never-ending toil as a housewife rarely occasions expressions of appreciation within her family. As startling as this statistic may be, it does not even account for the constant and unquantifiable attention mothers must give to their children. – apparently consume some three to four thousand hours of the average housewife’s year. The countless chores collectively known as “housework” – cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, making beds, sweeping, shopping etc. Source: Chapter 13 of Women, Race and Class, Angela Davis 1981 įirst published: in Great Britain by The Women's Press Ltd, 1982, 124 Shoreditch High St, London E1 6JE The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective

Race women class angela davis