The Value of Women’s Work
Productive & Reproductive Work
• Productive Work
– producing goods or services for exchange (industrial
capitalism=money exchange)
• Reproductive Work
– work that involves caring for others. Housework,
cooking, care of the sick and elderly.
• Distinction between productive &
reproductive in developed countries:
Industrialization– separation of
private/public
Shift from
The family-based economy
The family-wage economy
The family-consumer economy
Family Based Economy
• All family members work to reproduce
family (farming, canning, sewing, cleaning,
tool making)
Family Wage Economy
• Separation of public (work for wages in
factories) and private (household)
• Reproductive work attached to private
sphere
• Reproductive work defined as “nonwork”—no wages attached.
Family Consumer Economy
• Extension of family wage economy but,
More household tasks are farmed out to paid
“help” (Enter Nannies & Maids)
Or, commodified (taken out of the home and
sold back to consumers) (Enter Service
Workers)
The Gender Wage Gap
• See Overhead
• What Patterns do you detect?
Question for All
• Why do you think women’s work is valued
so little?
• How do you think the transition from the
family-based to family-wage economy
shaped the value of “women’s” work?
• How does this play out in the wages
attached to the work of nannies and
maids?
Group #1
• Hochschild & Ehrenreich lay out the push and pull
factors that spark labor migration into household
work (nannies & maids).
• What are these factors?
• How does male privilege figure into these trends
(increased hiring of maids & nannies)?
• Paint us a picture: Who are the nannies & maids?
Who are the women and men who hire them?
• Group #2
• Hochschild discusses love as a resource that is
extracted from developing countries. What does she
mean by this?
• Be sure to discuss the following:
• How do ethnic stereotypes shape employers
perceptions of the nanny role?
• Hochschild says that, “What is being extracted (love)
is partly assembled here…” What does she mean by
this?
• Group #3
• Ehrenreich points out that the work done by
maids (housekeeping) is being transformed
by corporations like Merry Maids? What does
this transformation look like? And, what might
it mean for the women doing the work?
• Group #4
• Toward the end of each article, Hochschild
& Ehrenreich put forth some suggestions
that might improve the lives of maids and
nannies. What are these suggestions?
• What do you think of their suggestions?
Relationships Between Domestic
Workers and Their Female Employers
• What do both of today’s articles have in
common?
Hondagneu Sotello:
Themes:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Patriarchy & shifting the burden.
Care work as non-work (blurred boundaries).
#1 leads to unique employer expectations.
#1 & 2 creates employee/employer tensions.
What are the tensions?
How are tensions resolved?
Do these resolutions further gender & labor inequity?
Pei-Chia Lan
Themes:
1. A unique dimension added to previous
discussions of shifting the burden.
 Lan states speaks of the “…transfer chain of
“filial kin work,” which [she defines] as care work
to maintain patrilineal intergenerational ties.”
What does she mean by this?
Lan Continued:
Chinese family traditions intersect w/ /patriarchy
Consequently,
 Expectation that mother-in-law will live with son.
 Women charged with care of mother-in-law.
 Mother-in-law has authority over daughter-in-law & her duties.
How have these relations been transformed in recent years?
What role do migrant domestic workers play in the
transition?
Do resolutions to the “mother-in-law” issue challenge or
secure patriarchy?