Women Who Do Housework Should be Paid For It.

[Forty Two]

I am exceptionally competent with a vacuum cleaner and a mop. My wife is exceptionally competent at cleaning bathrooms and toilets. We are specialists...

Yes, but she should be paid. As a man, you don't do nearly enough.

[Forty Two]

The gender roles are diminishing here in Oz at least. And not to mention that many mothers work full time too as well as the father.

Yes. Things are improving, but there is quite a long way to go yet. It seems that a lot of the time when the man of the dual income household returns from his hard day at work he takes the rubbish out once a week, mows the lawn once a fortnight, hangs a picture up once in a blue moon, changes lightbulbs as needed, then settles down in front of the teev to watch the footy. When the woman returns from her hard day at work, she is more often than not lumbered with the bulk of the cooking, cleaning and child-rearing, some of which she does before going to her place of employment as well.

There are exceptions, of course, and as I said things are improving, but at this stage the exceptions remain just that - exceptions. I regret not having been an example of such exceptions.

I find this to be nothing like reality for myself or any man I know that has a wife and kids.

The men with kids that I know come home from work and work with the kids, change diapers, clean the house, make dinner, and various other day-to-day chores. The days of wives toiling in stoic silence while men sit with their feet up -- if they ever really existed -- are long gone. At least, in my experience here in America. None of the women around here would put up with that at all.

Even the men with stay-at-home wives have to do housework.

Generally, when a two-income spouse has to do the bulk of housework and cooking it's because the other spouse works significantly more hours than the other.

[PsychoSerenity]

There are huge amounts of economically important work that get done without pay because there's no opportunity for direct profits in it. Not just housework, but the entire voluntary sector, those who work as unpaid carers, large parts of creative industries from arts to open-source software development, and amateur science and other academic areas. I think it's perfectly reasonable that such economic contributions be encouraged and rewarded by society. The simplest way to do it would be with a universal basic income.

[Seth]

There are huge amounts of economically important work that get done without pay because there's no opportunity for direct profits in it. Not just housework, but the entire voluntary sector, those who work as unpaid carers, large parts of creative industries from arts to open-source software development, and amateur science and other academic areas. I think it's perfectly reasonable that such economic contributions be encouraged and rewarded by society. The simplest way to do it would be with a universal basic income.

Feel free to contribute from your wealth voluntarily to support starving artists and code monkeys in their mom's basements, just don't use the Mace of State to compel other people to do so against their will.

[PsychoSerenity]

Would it help you to imagine that the state is just a big private corporation run to make profits for those that own it, and that your bosses take the profits they get from the work you do and use some of it to pay other employees wages to do jobs which help you to do yours?

[pErvinalia]

Nothing will help him understand basic economics.

[JimC]

I think that a universal basic income is highly problematic, if automatically given, no questions asked. Too easy to be taken advantage of by spongers...

(which is not to say that there should not be a very comprehensive system of income support for those in society with real disabilities, and for those with temporary unemployment, as long as there is also a process to help and encourage people to re-enter the workforce when they can. This needs to be well funded, and to maximise re-training etc.)

[pErvinalia]

Evidence suggests otherwise, Jim. A basic income has been trialled and used in a number of places around the world and the results are usually an increase in work and economic participation and a reduction in entrenched poverty. This idea that there is a threat of spongers is simplistic neoliberal fear rhetoric.

[pErvinalia]

http://www.economist.com/news/internati ... annot-deal

[Hermit]

The gender roles are diminishing here in Oz at least. And not to mention that many mothers work full time too as well as the father.

Yes. Things are improving, but there is quite a long way to go yet. It seems that a lot of the time when the man of the dual income household returns from his hard day at work he takes the rubbish out once a week, mows the lawn once a fortnight, hangs a picture up once in a blue moon, changes lightbulbs as needed, then settles down in front of the teev to watch the footy. When the woman returns from her hard day at work, she is more often than not lumbered with the bulk of the cooking, cleaning and child-rearing, some of which she does before going to her place of employment as well.

There are exceptions, of course, and as I said things are improving, but at this stage the exceptions remain just that - exceptions. I regret not having been an example of such exceptions.

I find this to be nothing like reality for myself or any man I know that has a wife and kids.

You seem to live in an enlightened stratum of society. Turning from the anecdotal to the statistic view:

Later housework studies have found that women—especially employed women—are doing less housework than before and that men are doing somewhat more. Nevertheless, the average married woman in the United States did about three times as much cooking, cleaning, laundry, and other routine housework in the 1990s as the average married man. Household work continues to be divided according to gender, with women performing the vast majority of the repetitive indoor housework tasks and men performing occasional outdoor tasks (Coltrane 2000).

(Link) The article is 13 years old, but while conditions have undoubtedly improved between then and now I doubt the change is substantial.

I tried to ferret out concrete data. Unfortunately every study that looked promising is either behind a paywall or only available on paper. The closest I got to one was this study. Done in Italy, the numbers cannot be assumed to be the same as in the USA. The history and social fabric is different. However, like the USA, Italy is a modern, developed capitalist democracy. It turns out that when both partners work full time the female spends 226 minutes a day doing housework and 91 doing childcare, while the figures for the male are 87 and 50 respectively. When the male is unemployed and the female works full time the woman still does a little more of the housework (215) than the male (195), though a bit less time on childcare (41 and 70 minutes respectively).

If you can find recent statistics as they apply to the USA I would love to see them.

[JimC]

Evidence suggests otherwise, Jim. A basic income has been trialled and used in a number of places around the world and the results are usually an increase in work and economic participation and a reduction in entrenched poverty. This idea that there is a threat of spongers is simplistic neoliberal fear rhetoric.

Where has it been trialled?

And I think the key to reducing poverty is policies which get the maximum number of people working as possible, which means governments investing heavily in job creation, infrastructure development and, in particular, well targeted training schemes... Of course, along with that, giving adequate financial support to people who simply cannot work, or are in between jobs.

[Tyrannical]

Any task that a housewife performs could be replaced by a near minimum wage housekeeper thanks to liberal immigration policies. If housewives were paid that rate for their work, they most likely would not be able to afford to pay their fair share of living expenses for the house they live in

[pErvinalia]

Evidence suggests otherwise, Jim. A basic income has been trialled and used in a number of places around the world and the results are usually an increase in work and economic participation and a reduction in entrenched poverty. This idea that there is a threat of spongers is simplistic neoliberal fear rhetoric.

Where has it been trialled?

The link is in the post following that one.

[pErvinalia]

Any task that a housewife performs could be replaced by a near minimum wage housekeeper thanks to liberal immigration policies. If housewives were paid that rate for their work, they most likely would not be able to afford to pay their fair share of living expenses for the house they live in

In Merka, sure. In other parts of the world, the minimum wage is a liveable wage.

[pErvinalia]

Evidence suggests otherwise, Jim. A basic income has been trialled and used in a number of places around the world and the results are usually an increase in work and economic participation and a reduction in entrenched poverty. This idea that there is a threat of spongers is simplistic neoliberal fear rhetoric.

Where has it been trialled?

And I think the key to reducing poverty is policies which get the maximum number of people working as possible, which means governments investing heavily in job creation, infrastructure development and, in particular, well targeted training schemes... Of course, along with that, giving adequate financial support to people who simply cannot work, or are in between jobs.

The reality is that the west is facing systemic un(der)-employment due to offshoring of jobs and technological disruption. It's only going to get worse. We either accept this fact and agree that there will always be a 15-20% of the working population un(der)-employed, with that percentage growing in the future, and pay everyone a minimum living wage, or follow the current inhuman system where we treat welfare recipients as spongers and inherently flawed (i.e. Social Darwinism bollocks) and punish them for not working in jobs that don't exist. If we did away with the whole welfare system and just payed everyone a set minimum wage, I'd expect it wouldn't be much more expensive, and possibly less expensive in the long run. No need for reporting and enforcement measures and associated staff, and all the cross checking and auditing that goes along with that. Centrelink could be closed and go fully online. Save HEAPS of money.