Unknown Speaker  00:05
Conferences the scholar in the feminist seventh class, race and sex. The workshop is workshop number 12. The boiling pot race class ethnic conflict in housework. The leaders are Bettina, Burch and Calico Carolyn re

Unknown Speaker  00:25
emerge and I'm trying to be my first, hopefully brief presentation, recovering some of the history of the world is possible. And they can take those who were left off. If I'm going to put there's going to be just slowly found, there's a lot of material I wanted to bring up here. First of all, some general perspectives that I want to clue you into, from looking at the history of hardship. In America. Password has always been for the most part, women's work, either paid or unpaid. Second, housework has always been socially necessary. It is the reproduction of labour power on a day to day basis, and without this labor of no other place. Third, hustler has always been the boiling pot, not the melting pot. On the back burner of the kitchen, the boiling pot has simmered for boil with race class as the conflict, this conflict in some ways, probably because it was very individualized has been extremely intense and never really resolved. We those few insights his introduction. Let's take a look backward in American history at the conflict in concert. As I said, it has always existed ever since the first Europeans colonized America when the first settlers arrived, so women were the servants or slaves of other women, adult women who could pay their own passage and had no previous debts or penal obligations arrived on this land as free citizens with fake mistresses. All other women were their servants. We include as servants then, all transported criminals, who came by and large as indentured servants of debtors, who arrived as indentured servants, Native American women who became slaves, and black women were also slaves. In the colonization period, some women worked off their intention and became free women. This was often a matter of luck. Maybe intentioned women lost their papers were illiterate in understanding papers, and had to serve longer and longer in dentures. Others continued their servitude longer and longer as they became pregnant, which was a condition which meant that if your intention, certainly the patch, spend longer time to rip off your indenture and penalize therefore, by the imposition of future service. So women came as indentured servants gave them freedom. In some cases, married welcome then, God servants themselves and proceeded to abuse their uncertainties. We have some interesting evidence on some women's cases, you can get this afterwards. It was a engraving done in 1760s. On the fortunate transport, it shows in vignettes the life of a woman who came over as a servant. How should we undersell and in the last scene is whipping from slaves. So much more intention servants. Slaves, on the other hand, were slaves for life, except that they ran away successfully. This running away was one day of the Native Americans who could escape rather completely if they can rejoin their tribes. Therefore, the Native Americans are now going to be very poor subjects and slaves. In the period up to the American Revolution, until approximately the 1840s, there was much controversy in America about how service should be treated. Although on one point, everyone was clear. It was the duty of the wife to handle.

Unknown Speaker  05:20
Now, what was the problem, as they saw, on the one hand, the problem was probably history class. Americans were supposed to be egalitarian, unlike their European colleagues yet, maybe like Mrs. trough, do we want their servants eating at the table with them. Others like Grant and grant wanted their service where libraries were uniform. And de Tocqueville always want to explain America to Americans said that service in America was not a lifetime occupation, as it was in Europe. But as he put it, temporary employment. Now, apart from the question of who should be the service, the practical problem that wives of the middle and upper classes complained about was their inability to get the keep service. So we asked ourselves, who were the surface in this period, from about 1800, to the Civil War. On one hand, they were black slave women, who was service in South and in the war. On the other hand, a growing community of immigrant movements, sometimes from Ireland, sometimes in Germany, depending on the waves of immigration into the United States. They used serving jobs to support themselves when they arrived, according to the 1890 census much later, but we don't have a lot of census data earlier. 60% of all white women in Africa who have foreign born, were domestic. American magazines in the period were filled with various racial slurs, various ethnic stereotypes. They went through various names that they always decided were the servants named Bridget, many so forth. And in American homes, servants were mistreated, abused, exploited by both their mistresses and a Masters, since if they were black, if they were immigrant, and the poor poor at the same time, they have few alternatives to domestic service. Some mistresses who are either unable or unwilling to live with such an oppressive situation, look for alternative solutions. For some women, and some families, the boring hotel with a boarding house wasn't meant to escape from the quote unquote, service. This was very popular in urban areas. This enabled people to live without hiring their own service. Likewise, in the New England areas, there were various facts and cooperative housekeeping, where there were no servants employed, but women banded together and formed out their own housekeeping among themselves. Now, with respect to this conflict, over the survey question, there was one perhaps significant breakthrough with the beaters, who in their various writings, the American home and other bodies are put the sermon proper, as was called back on the shoulders of ministers. And their point was, if you can't run household properly, you will never be able to have a reasonable service relationship. So their moral story was that one mistresses should learn themselves about housework, and how to do it. And this, of course, complemented their work in the anti slavery movement, as well. If we, rushing along, move to the post Civil War period, we have a new constellation of forces, even though the same issues are going on underneath or awkwardly low, middle and upper class families in America. The post Civil War period was a period, a lot of new money and upwardly striving ambitions This translated into a great demand for servants in order to show off their arrival in the society. Many of these people, in fact, felt the need to resort to imported servants from Europe in order to enhance their feeling of nobility, and having arrived in society, but this only escalated to warfare and household. Since the greater the class pretentions of the mistress, usually the worst of the law of the surface, further ones period we have, especially in the north, with increasing urban northern migration of blacks from the south, the expanded use of black women in domestic service of north as ex slaves, and in some fashions mitigate their own conditions of slavery in the South. We have at this time, various experimental ideas that people were bringing forward to deal with, again, the certain many of these were extremely reactionary solutions, on the one hand, movements to institute professional schools, training girls in domestic court, a lot of bomb decisions in the schools were feeling that this would create a cast of domestic servants and movement towards living out surface rather than living in the house, which began in the 1870s. Some attempts again, uncooperative housekeeping, without service, and some tentative towards service unions to establish codes of ethical treatment, and less exploitative hiring and pay practices. But the main idea that was catching on in American society, in this period, which goes back in some ways to reachers was really the great job of the business by 1900 was the following message. Basically, women give up your servants, which you've been having trouble with, and don't lie anyway, by the way, your savings machine, and you do the work yourself. The advertising pitch, the big business used in this period, was extraordinarily racist, extraordinarily anti ethnic groups, promoting all of the various vicious ethnic stereotypes of the period, and play on the guilt of the American mistress, and the weakness of the mistress position. So these new labor saving devices, I know which we might add, parenthetically, these devices historically, never having saved much labor, but only shifted on to the unpaid housewife just prompts you to take place not great, but I have four slides with me, I want to show you some of the advertising art of this period. These were slides which are slides of items that were just assumed by somebody who just

Unknown Speaker  13:54
everybody who didn't last move the candidate, okay, this was a scene that was repeated on one set of advertising cards of the 1880s. To show sort of before seen in laundry, you see how they pictured the relationship between the black washerwoman here and the dainty work that's done by the white mistresses, working on nice and living in its final stages. Their own business, they're just very different. We don't know who they are. As you can see, it's fish brothers. Chemically. Borax is trying to sell their washing powder with the idea that this will wash that harmony. I've watched this one namely, right mainly because they are trying to show you what a typical scene of the period is supposed to look like in terms of have black white relations Yeah. Well, she's got more than I have to deal with here. So this was there are Yeah. I have here unfortunately poor advertising points which are on one slide. So it's really wonderful to see them. But the three the, let's say you call it a left leave on one o'clock and four o'clock, I bought the dress. These are our slides promoting the sales of Mrs. Potts is ironed, which was supposed to revolutionize ironing and make it a lot easier quicker. The point in the slides that are in the 11th o'clock, one o'clock and four o'clock position is that the idea is that American women can get rid of Oriental labor in the laundry industry by using Mrs. Francis irons. So the little verses that read on these cartoons are on on that theme. I have some hard copy of the slides which may have made it easier for you to read and I can show you later on. But unfortunately those to us. I had to I had to bring it to you by the reception I can bring it to you. I just have to run down the stairs, the bottom one here these irons to make the angels robes and heaven clean is this appeal to women that it's it's those black slaves who know about ironing and eat. But they're telling you that Mrs. Montes irons are superb. So you want to take their word. It's a very good British. And indeed. When you're around at a PHQ, nine, advertising, post repair shop and grocery stores, here's an ad for a new form of flour sifter. The old way on the left is presumably your black slave or servant on the right way. This is after the Civil War all these reactions to the new way is the white housewife who can do it herself with a labor saving device. Now finally, as a sort of a coup de gras we have universal flu chopper, which was advertising itself as a labor saving device and put your receiver clearly loosely what they were trying to say. They have the one hand those blood shortens that you should have in your house. Now with the new Universal Food Chopper, you can do it yourself. It makes cooking easy. Okay. That's just a brief look at what was going on in American industry at that period.

Unknown Speaker  18:32
The advertising pitch is basically trying to tell American women Hey, get rid of the surgeon problem prior labor saving device and do all that work yourself. Um, furthermore, we might have that if we look towards the 19 teens and 20s. We have even within the feminist movement, certainly on the ideologues of the feminist movement, among them, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others, who basically are telling women in such books as the home telling women that they can get rid of this suspicious servant in their home by redesigning the household and there are other sort of pitches on women's place in society. Basically, though, they were telling women that you don't want to have a serpent in the house, it's a really fishing thing. And wouldn't you be better off if password was rationalized so that you didn't have to have the stranger in your gates? Um, I'll wrap up quickly. We know that machines do not end the labor and housework. We know that this issue of race class, ethnic conflict in housework was never resolved because it was never frontally addressed And the only thing we had that was vaguely progressive in the early 20th century, were certain movements that tried to organize household workers towards at least a more stable work contract. We have some attempts by the IW W, to organize domestic workers to get them on, at least have better wages and a place to appeal to for their grievances, their grievances were many within that period, are not being paid for the work being paid less. And this can go on and on. Simultaneously, we have the growth in America, as you know from other reading, I'm sure of the Home Economics movement, which attempted to draw in this professional household work idea to the middle class housewife to train her to do that household work in a totally professional manner. But the problem still remains. And to look at the sort of modern period, I try to count.

Unknown Speaker  21:22
And if she turns me over to the modern period, I will not use the word service. Or any of those terms, or May, I proceeded to tell you that the modern period, they usually tend to say that history repeats itself. Well, we're still living in some of the same kind of the same struggles that we did then in a different in another time. Man, I have one. And I hope that we could talk together about a year I've had a couple problems with the conference around class and what it meant. It's sort of like, when people are talking about minority, they immediately think of black or people of color. And I often, you know, gee, I'm really in the majority. So why am I called the minority? In that sense? So I still have a problem with class in the sense that I think a lot of us as feminists see class as an economic thing, but I get the feeling that class, the underlying tone of class means something else that maybe somebody could help me with that, you know, I had a problem with what was lower middle class? And what is upper middle class. And in speaking of black women, a lot, I've heard a lot of black women refer to themselves as middle class. I have never heard anyone refer to themselves as upper class. And so that must mean that there is a lower class. And what does that mean? And so I would like us to, you know, when we get into the discussion period, to kind of address that and see where people are coming from as far as class issues are concerned. Now, when I talk about class, I want to clearly the bad one, hardly use the word class, that we're talking about economics, that there are some people who are paying a lower amount of money and people who are paying a higher amount of money instead of people who were who somehow inherited those few people who run this country. It was very interesting to see the I want to also talk about feminism and classes and inspire engineers, concerning household technicians, which you will hear me use a word that people do the work, so define for themselves. So I will use that sensitivity, the definition that we would like to be addressed. As I wanted to sort of back into it, as far as feminism concerned, some of my feminist friends in the 1970s, who would not hire black women in their homes because my gosh, I can't have a black woman doing what I don't want to do and what I see as distasteful. And it was, I'll give you an example. We were hired by Ms. Magazine to do a party for unfound and some women but it was in a strange apartment in the West. The apartment had one door and that wasn't the door. It was He entered, and everything else was open. When you were in the bathroom, there was an error. So you could see someone coming kind of like in the air. And we appeared in uniform at this place, and there were about 150 people, and we will be well paid for it. By the way, we had a signed contract. And as people appeared, and they saw us, and most of us in our group were black, because white women who did household work had a hesitancy to be long to what they saw as a black identified group. Very ardent women, this turned around at the door to people not well, there they have made. And I heard this one, and it disturbed me a bit. And when I heard it over and over, there was certainly a whole racial issue there. The point is, is that if you're hiring someone, you're paying an adequate salary. In If you respect what they're doing,

Unknown Speaker  26:17
you don't have those kind of guilt hang ups that people have. Now, God knows, in fact, I think I live in charge and that we were being paid a hell of a lot of money for this. So I remember having to take the microphone from Bella, and not many people can take the microphone. Let's get our heads together, we have here we are working with the well paying for it. And what is made in your head is not made in my head, I am wearing my uniform, because it happens to be the uniform in my profession, I'm going to get it dirty, you see clean around here, and I don't want to do my good dress, you know, I don't work in this. And that is why I'm wearing a uniform and sort of I identified it with you know, like when you go into a doctor, somehow you want he or she to have on the white coat, you don't expect to see her and there's nothing wrong with it sitting with her dress. Uniform that identified me. And what I found is that a lot of feminists had a lot of problems with the ratio, and the whole class issue. There was something that they did not want to do it themselves that you could afford to pay someone to do it for you if they would not because of what they were feeling about their own self worth. And let's examine that. And what has happened is that, because for so long housework has been identified as women's work, no one has placed the true value on what it is or respect for what a woman does in the home as an unpaid worker, okay, so that people have gotten it so long for nothing. And so when they have to pay someone for it, even my feminist friends, they put very little value on Oh, I can do this in no time, you know, why should I pay someone $7 an hour. And then when they those do tend to hire someone, then there's the whole thing. wanting something for nothing. So I'm sure all of you been, well, maybe not all of you. But some of us have been in the position, especially me use my younger example. I did password protection. So that if I have to hire someone to do it, I expect someone to be superhuman, you know, because I have done this and I couldn't do it like in split and I have this system and someone says hey, wait a minute. You know, you're paying me to do X, Y and Z and we have hard time sort of dealing with that. Now why women working for black women and black women working for Biden women is a whole nother thing. Okay, so if you get someone as we do now, who will call it agencies they can because they can't deal with this. And this is a black woman and she happens to live on Fifth Avenue in the 70s so you don't like it? live there. And so the agency sends over an Irish woman who opens the door. And when we raise the doorbell is black woman says I want to see that too. So and so I am here to the woman said is it something, which is what. And the tendency is to be very upset about it.

Unknown Speaker  30:29
I think that's something that we want to discuss and have some dialogue about, I'm just throwing out a lot of issues here too, then you have, when we get to the issue of class, you have black women working for other black women. Okay, and that's now that is what I consider a real class issue. And you have, you know, black woman who goes to work for another black woman, and has a hard time dealing with that. And you also had an the employer, having a hard time dealing with having a black person working for her and say that the majority of the room, and I don't know what your racial background, is looking at most of the matte black. But, you know, that's an assumption that I think of yourselves as anything, but just sort of overall looking. I would say that that's for a whole nother thing. But I think it's something that you're talking about when you're talking about conflict. And you know, I sort of understand that conflict. When you talk about other minority women in the field of household employment right now, it's very sexy to have and when you were talking about earlier about the migration of women, what do you think is the sexy thing to have now is the household This is texting race to have? Absolutely. The Asian woman, I mean, it's, if you want to be sort of, you know, in the upper Mandeville, Rockefeller kind of thing, you have your ancient house full white, and woman, and the end four or five years before it may have been the who was coming in? Well, anyhow, what whoever tends to be migrated to the country at that point for the city. It really was if there was a conflict, because people did not know whether to hire blacks or to have them agencies, their friends. What every black house her work and sort of got invited to meet, Mrs. So and so who was my friend, and every black household worker became someone's friend during that period. And in the 70s, they quickly got I'm glad that I'm rid of that period, you know, so that they don't do that I had a very interesting discussion with an Asian woman, and up anchors, who said that her mother worked as a Japanese as a household worker. And that woman did not know how to deal with it. I wanted to show people how liberal she was. And she invited her mother and she said, this is whatever her mother's name was. And her mother proceeded to sit down, because she thought that she had been in by and to take a cup to be a friend. And when the woman says something is version in the kitchen, she said, No, nothing is very needed to take part in the conversation. Well, after the company laughed, she said, Don't you ever sit down with my guests? Again? That's the whole sort of double standard sort of, okay, it's okay. That's a whole class. The next one I see is about class. I can do something that is going to make that guy, friend, because we discussed it earlier. I said, how much of a friend are you? But earlier this summer, I had an experience of going to Sarah Lawrence and learning something about a little bit about history, in fact, a lot about history and about women's history. And that's why I'm always in awe people like prettiman, who, you know, who know all of this marvelous with marvelous historical things. I'm also Not only can draw by but very proud of her that she changed her thesis. We were up with Tara Mara. She was a teaching assistant to their teaching assistant named toilet paper, check that one. time she has been, in fact, one day money, call me she's very excited, because she had connected something with it, what is it, she can also attend to this whole class.

Unknown Speaker  35:31
So what I want her to do is to search kind of share if she would lie, because she does not do anything that she does not want to do. It she's about to share that with us some of the work that she has been doing around and if you don't want to share with you excuse us? Know, I think it's most important, I want you know, I

Unknown Speaker  35:58
think that I would rather not go into the classroom, what I would like to do, I think is amplified a couple of attempts comments. Because I am working on a history of household unfolding. My specialization is black women's history. One of the A couple points, I'd like to enlarge on what is in terms of the history of black women in household employment. I know you jumping centuries, and it's really tough. One of the points I would like to make is that black woman moving. Black women had been involved in household employment historically. Point number one, many black women came over not as indentured servants that they came over free. And oh, in indentured black indentured servants. That's an interesting point. I think. I think it's also interesting that there were a number of black women, many black women that work for black families, free black families during slavery. Another point I'd like to make is continuous talking about the expanded use of black doing this servant. I would like to go into why black women have been locked into the profession of household income in and that is, because that has been for ages, the only source of employment that has been open universally to black women. There's an interesting connection between racism in the north and how it manifests itself in the south, and the household employment in the north. I want to talk about in the north 1776 Age of Reason. Thomas Jefferson and then, in the north, what happened was that there was a tendency to be very democratic equality minded so that white women in the north who were household workers were not called servants anymore. They made a big point of calling the households workers health. Household workers didn't want to be called servants and the people that were hiring them did not want them to be called servants because we were supposed to be now equal. You know, all men are created equal. In the south, what was happening is such that was becoming king, after Royston tobaccos is about the turn of the century 1800. And more and more blacks were coming to this country, enslaved Africans were being brought

Unknown Speaker  38:44
in the South's black women in the house became

Unknown Speaker  38:47
a caste system that only black women were in the house. White women who were household workers were not full service. Black women were called certainly so the name service for a while in that period of history left for white women entirely. In the South that was reserved for black women only in the North. The women were called to help. As after the Civil War and emancipation, the only occupation that was opened for black women was still household work, even with the migration north where as white women who began to go into the factories, again into the clerical system, some black women did teach there are always exceptional black women and we have done everything throughout history. Don't misunderstand me, but for the most part, the jobs that are open for black women work in household employment. So that we have a long history one of the things I think the comments that I would like to make this the reason that I am doing this history project as Carolyn these black women have been instrumental in the building of this country from day one as household workers racism in the north and was always weird in the South. In the south, black women in the home were called for some time magnets were viewed as such, there wasn't, there wasn't a threat of having a black woman in your home. Because you were a slave even after emancipation even after we were free, because you were a slave, you were inferior that was taken for granted. That was the given. So that black woman in the home women, the woman to woman connection is what interests me in the South. Man me should I marry so and so. And so maybe we go talk to the memory from another plantation or farm I shouldn't say farm because they're mostly farms, the plantation was not the norm. It was mostly farmers, plantation. So, so called plantation sells, so that the man who was the one that set up marriages, she talked to the mistress, she was in a unique position of having the possibility of being raped by the master while being best friends with the wife. There are numerous slave narratives of the black woman in the home being whipped because the white woman in the home couldn't stand the fact that her husband was raping the black woman. And then the white man would have the woman with, you know, that kind of double bond constantly. Women have been in the double bond. Last week, but I think historically, black women in House of work, the history is rich, and one of survival and the class thing is, it is interesting to me, because I feel that in the north, black women were not hiring directly, it was more than immigrant women. Because of the different aspects of racism. In the north, by and large, racism was eliminated much earlier than the South, the South has this whole, the comfortable lady was built into the south, and the north, it was more. I don't know if you agree between the cult of domesticity? What I mean by the differences in the south, a woman was put on a pedestal, and she was a status symbol. In the north, it was more of a woman what she did wasn't just her physical presence, it was what you were talking about. But it's for your own good now you should do the work you should not hire people is important to remember that women continue to hire household workers, and will continue to do so point that I've made to Carolyn on the phone when that was the kind of intimate connection that I felt between the feminist movement, and the work that we're trying to do with the National Committee of household employment. One of our main goals is to try and upgrade the status of household employment, that is an intimate part of my work is to share with household technicians, their history, so they know how important they are to the building of this nation, to give them a sense of importance in the work they do. Until women view that work as important until society sees that work is important. That's not going to change much. And we've argued about this. That's not going to change much. And I see the intimate connection with the feminist movement in the to the entire nature of what is women's work is changed. Household employment will still be brilliant Tuesday night on type where to do that, instead of seeing it as a profession. And that's just

Unknown Speaker  43:34
and so that we have time for questions I want to bring out another just another strange point. And that is that I think most of you see what has become another sort of thing now that Sargon why. And what she does, is to she does housework is what she does, but she gets $20 an hour. And she is a a white woman who has marketed herself basically is the surrogate wife of a rent again. She's called a surrogate why she advertises as a surrogate why it's one woman in New York, one woman and she makes $20 an hour. She was recently on Good Morning America. The point is that she makes $20 an hour. And I can say a word and I have a hard time getting my $3.10 an hour for doing the same thing that she happens to be a a white woman called Receptus the story but why does it do anything do anything work. That's what I'm pointing out to do not do anything different and she will do it. She will take your laundry to the laundry. She will. I don't think she'll watch your laundry. She will pop she will clean your house. She will feed your cat she will. Very interesting. Sorry, the wife was asleep. Well, I don't know if anyone says she didn't hit me, Mark. Yes, she has the marketing. She does all the things that people presume that wise.

Unknown Speaker  45:38
I think there's another point though, is, as I understand that she also entertains your guests.

Unknown Speaker  45:46
The two things are saying they are

Unknown Speaker  45:50
tied to workshop 12. April 12.

Unknown Speaker  45:55
Class thing because of the whole race thing that people would not think twice a lot of people have PE, Ms seven, so $20 an hour. And people think it's a real hardship to pay me. Well, I know. They think that I'm lost on got in mind.

Unknown Speaker  46:21
I think one of the things that happened in amorous is good to bring in here she was a black woman in the audience that we were talking to said, Carolyn asked the women, black professional women, how many women here would want their daughters to be household technicians. And most of them were born. And one woman said my daughter aspires to be a flight attendant, I was trying to explain to her that there is between being a flight attendant, and being a household technician is the glory of the job. It's the status of the job to a uniform. But it isn't the same job. And I think those

Unknown Speaker  47:00
benefits are better said,

Unknown Speaker  47:03
yeah, well. That's exactly what I pointed out. I think the reason that most of you don't want your daughters to become household technicians. In fact, in the simple statement, I don't want my niece to become a wife.

Unknown Speaker  47:30
And unless that whole status changes, you know, you don't want you if the job was well pay, if it was a status position as that person who see that the whole thing is the benefits and hosting around and I'm saying as we I'm looking at it now as we can do to upgrade this position. We now have, you know, we've got a look at it. And I go back to the whole race thing, where there used to be young black students coming from the south, to live in, and do housework to make their money to go back to school in the summer. You know, in winter, you now have students from Columbia combinded Sarah Lawrence airlines doing those jobs, they realize that this is profitable. I can you know, and they're people who used to hire young black students from the south are now hiring young white women or Asian as the case may be to do that work. And as we have graded, it's just like the hotel profession and how many black garbage out there in history, you know that people want to look done that as a real shit job when there were no benefits of poured into it. But I always point out the fact that there are a lot of grades on Fifth Avenue, there's one man who's relegated to a broom and he walks behind the horses. And his job is to shovel mud chip away. And he is watching $1,000 Plus benefits. And plus people clap when he does. Yeah, okay.

Unknown Speaker  49:25
Can I ask a question? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  49:27
I don't I open it up. But why don't we open it up for questions down so that we can have interaction and I know that you call on people you call them for example.

Unknown Speaker  49:43
I have a question, which is, do you think, I guess comes in two parts? Do you think that when that household work is devalued? Primarily because women do it or primarily because it's been a black occupation?

Unknown Speaker  49:56
Because of both equally because both is not been how Sport has not been a black occupation. Right? Well, it has been a black paid, you know, volunteer housework it has been women's work has been relegated to women.

Unknown Speaker  50:15
And do you think that like some other professions now, like flagged? And then it will games that it could gain status through employment? Or? No? How would How would it? How do you work

Unknown Speaker  50:30
status when women began to place a value on what they do? I think you're going to find very few men going into the field of household employment, there are two things you want, you're working in a private home, and people are not going to hire men. And last, you will notice that most men who are hired and home unless you go back to the nation day, are men with slider. But Asian men houseboy, and that's because they are less threatening, physically, to, to the whole scene. And actually, it was an older woman who pointed out to me that you could possibly find very few people, you know, abroad that will hiring men or household employment for other reasons.

Unknown Speaker  51:26
Why don't you will identify yourself, so we get to know each other. And because I think it's very important what you're doing. And so that everybody

Unknown Speaker  51:35
else knows what to do.

Unknown Speaker  51:37
I'm sorry, a colleague, and I'm not more School of Social Work. And I'm trying to occasional household work. And, in fact, it's

Unknown Speaker  51:46
kind of interesting experience when I present it to my committee,

Unknown Speaker  51:50
this is what I wanted to do. And everyone kind of stared at their mouths open. an RV. Sure. And so through the support of Mike corral, and another person, I'm trudging away despite the look, one of the things that are one with the question that was that was raised was that when you look at a lot of the the readings by market patient or status, most often occupations are defined in terms of their status as percent minority in a particular occupation. And somebody will get them household work and take them to the sound and so forth, then it is an automatically put into a normal status, position and command have worked in household position physicians, they tend to make more than the women doing comparable kinds of things. And so there are both the issues of race and class, but it's difficult for me to separate the kind of passage you tend to look at is where rationing being from the South to. But Carolyn has really helped me to broaden perspective.

Unknown Speaker  53:15
You're very right, by the mere fact that demand opens the door. As they get more money. Back, I had a big problem with a tailor made and the Taliban system here in this city. And, you know, there are women who wash wall. And she, that woman who washed the wall does not make as much in that agency as the man who Washington was because it's presumed to be too heavy of work. I,

Unknown Speaker  53:48
I really sympathize with a lot of women who feel guilty when they hire somebody as heads of household technician, both my aunt an Irish background, and my mother when she came from Ireland was was amazing. My father's a chauffeur. Most of my relatives have at one time or another have worked as in the households of other rich people. And they always I've all my life, I've heard that they've been treated like things. They are treated as if they were not people, that their families were secondary to the families that they were working for. Now, I'm in a position that in this room, I look like any other. You know, I go to Columbia. I'm sort of blending in with the quote unquote, ruling class in this country. So for me, I realized that when I get into a professional status, I expect to be a professional. I expect to not to be able to to run a family to do laundry to do you No get down on my knees and scrub. I'm not saying that's degrading work. But I know that I'm not my when I'm being trained for is quite different from that I won't have the time, I won't have the energy to be able to do that. But I will feel guilty. And I have said this, to go out and say to a woman do this morning, because ice would be like saying to my mother, I want you to do this for me. She's not gonna fuse. With what I'm saying is that I still have, I still hear from my backgrounds, and my family and people that I am from. I still and I'm sure Black Moon, especially black women feel this way. They still hear the women from their community saying that goddamn person is treating me like I think

Unknown Speaker  55:50
I still, you know, that's it's guilt.

Unknown Speaker  55:54
It's guilt, and it's real guilt. But it's something that you have to take a long hard look. Oh, I agree with ya. If people pass away, people have to do it. I understand that, you know, but the one thing that I said to someone about guilt, you know, when they said I really can't have someone doing this with me, I said, pay me enough. Right. And you guys have to you'll get three guys. Oh, yeah. I know, I say, I agree totally,

Unknown Speaker  56:23
totally with you. Absolutely. Tell

Unknown Speaker  56:25
me a little dude, I'm gonna give you an example. Okay. When we had a fundraiser, I'm really thinking and creating things. And so I said, Let's go to automation has identified with labor. And let's have the Big Shot feminist and people who are sympathetic to our cause, serve the household tent. And it was it happened to be right after the election, we had a woman as the lieutenant governor for this game. So Marianne coupe sack put on her apron and tractor trailer, and Lady Gloria Steinem and Bella Aqsa, and I thought that lady probably was going to go into cardiac. The minute that she kind of train her hand, her closest friend would take the wine, champagne, reserve the champagne, champagne off the tray, and not even look at her. They did the same thing to Maryanne croute sec. Now, these women, she did not have that training her can get away from you know, because you know, I want the job I want this, they did not even look at and what they realized, at that point, if that quarterback, and she left, she said people I work with every day didn't look at me, you know that it's just as if I was not late. And this is what people tend to do. Even your most, you know, and I always identify feminism, as humanism, is being very human. It's very, and I sort of wonder about how likely we use the word feminists, about people identifying themselves as feminists. And I kind of resent it in the sense that there are people who will attach, you know, feminism, there's the women's movement, and there is the feminist movement. And they are two different things. Because I really feel that Phyllis Schlafly is a part of the women's movement. She is certainly not a feminist mindset. And I don't think we should identify yourself.

Unknown Speaker  58:42
Yeah, I think that this the point you made about the housework that we all do, being valued, being really crucial to the whole question of domestic work is relevant to household technicians work and so on, you know, it's really important is something that I've experienced firsthand because I've invested for myself, and that, I mean, what I find is that when I work for even if they have money, don't pay me a whole lot, because they feel like they're worth nothing that they pay for. And therefore they they don't feel like they can justify to their husbands who love many people they're basically going to look for are dependent on husbands anyway and have to go to him. They have they can justify can him why they should get give me a larger wage, because they are in county money coordinates work supposed to be their work. And that, you know, and so that until all of our housework is seen and valued and we're compensated for by weight, then I mean, that's a message that's really the crux of the matter. And I think he was what he was saying over here is important too, and that I think that we're facing a dilemma all of us around health too, because as we move into more and more of us into the paid labor force in order to have some money is independence, the hospital is still there. And what what are we going to do with it? I mean, everybody has housework to do, you know, and that's really the question everything that that No, we all get paid even more.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:03
Yeah, my name is Laurel iser, and I'm not a scholar. I'm a social worker. And I run a suite of programs in which we train women, most of whom have been on welfare, to be certified home health aides, and we place them a full time, jobs in agencies or nursing agencies, etc, we face these kinds of issues all the time now thinking about what we are doing socially. I want to make a comment on this whole question of valuing of housework. In terms of what you said about flight attendant versus the take off customer, etc, I really think the issue of the value of the work and whether it compares to a flight attendant orals profession of some sort of doctor or lawyer, I really think that's an important issue, but a separate issue from whether it's treated with regularity economically, and that what what is so complex about and miserable about this issue historically, is the the irregularity of this labor market and lack of any kind of the fact that it is a secondary labor market, that it has not been recognized that it does, that people doing this work, do not get workers coverage, the coverage is that workers get, and that historically, it was the Senate, the garbage person, that was the model of the lower end of of society. That was that was the example that was used in the 19th and 18th centuries of writing about in a perfect society, there's a certain kind of work that nobody is going to want to do. It wasn't housework, it was government work. Well, nobody feels guilty when they see people picking up garbage in a city in this country. And that is because people are paid. And they know that it's and it's not because people feel like garbage workers value work, or something that you would want to do yourself, that's a separate issue.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:53
Value of work will pay for,

Unknown Speaker  1:01:57
you know, the difference between pay value and intrinsic value and something goes, I think those two issues are separate and never really has to happen in this kind of work. It has to become regularized, it has to become recognized, paid, standardized, covered by friends, benefits covered by workers, workers compensation, etc. And that will take a lot of the guilt out of it because we're no longer manipulate your worker, or you as worker can no longer manipulate the guilt of your plan the guilt of your employer, because the rules are there. And there are so many monitoring those rules, a lot of the bad feelings will go I feel a lot of guilt has to do with the lack of monitoring lessons.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:35
In order to balance this out it was a male was you

Unknown Speaker  1:02:44
know you are stretching. I like to say when we talk about the college students who are now doing the household work, it really was not until it started being pulled by another names. Okay, a person or mother's helper, then he began to see, of course, all of the classified ads. But before I'm quite sure, if you said household work, or household worker or household helper, or mailable work, I'm quite sure that we would not have gotten some of these young people from these prestigious institutions to walk through his work.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:32
Yeah, my name is Daniel Victor tech program from the register housework campaign, what I wanted to speak about was this whole issue of being a professional and having to deal with housework. Because as a professional animator on to graduate school for five years for a number of degrees, you know, the way I feel is that I do two jobs, one and also, that I'm in very different position than men in my profession, because I can go out there like to do with housework. And, you know, a number of men can find your wives or girlfriends or whoever to make dinner for them when they can come home or at the lab to 1130 It's nice to have somebody come home to you know, waiting for you here and we never thought of, you know, also his this whole issue, though, of housework has been used, you know, to divide us saying that, well, you're a professional therefore, you are different from you know, any of these other women who are not educated before, you know, ABC or D ABCDE. And this one came in wages for housework campaign speaks very clearly to me because we all do housework. And as Pat said, but it doesn't disappear. And you know, and I am no different. And I refuse to accept that division, because if I do, that means I'm looking down at my mother and my grandmother. No,

Unknown Speaker  1:05:15
I feel it very badly. So dear to me that division, because I think you are really in two different worlds than if I in one sense, totally forget what my mother was, is what my aunts are. I'm separating myself from my background and my history. And but in another way I don't. I know myself as an individual, I don't have the energy to really, to pursue a career and to be as dynamic and as useful as I, as I want to be a candidate. But I just want to have the time. Oh, I definitely. The tree and everything else. And

Unknown Speaker  1:05:58
that's one and I feel guilty about it. I mean, I'm

Unknown Speaker  1:06:04
I mean, it's one reason I just like to share an incident. We were involved in a demonstration in Philadelphia, and the newspaper editor was interested in writing an article. And he had my number yet called me at work, right. All he knew was my name and wages for housework. We had to go through the Secretary and Secretary said, well, she's not available. She's testing a patient, right, you know, this, you know, he's just relocated back. And then when I got on the phone, he said, What's your problem? I mean, why are you working with these housewives? You know, and there's the division is really seen. And I think that's one thing that we really have to work to overcome. You see, one of them, were you good luck, reflect? No, no, what I'm saying is that what I'm seeing is that professionally, I'm in very different position than men I'm working with because I can't go out and find a wife, my housework is that I'm doing two jobs, and they only get paid.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:06
You've made the choice to go out and do your job. And men have this option. God given some money? Yeah. Some, some sounds.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:24
Okay. The point is, is that I, they're allowed to say what I needed to why, and basically, what they needed the choice to do or not to do, and what they're making the trend. Post to that whole thing. And you know, why being the person who is identified with doing that kind of work, and that is what, you know, kind of be brought up as an example, a man who goes out to do household work, he comes home, and he puts his feet up. Because there's somebody in your family there that will cook clean and do for him. But a woman who goes out to do household work, then has to come home and do household work again, because her children, the baby, getting there has just been sort of non enlisting what I would say to that, suppose you're getting around, I think what you made it seem like and what I got was good and nice to have somebody there to do that for you to maybe that's what you're not saying.

Unknown Speaker  1:08:37
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it would be nice. I mean, all of us need to have it. The point is, is that women don't have that option. I don't think it would be nice.

Unknown Speaker  1:08:46
On the one hand, seizures to do what I need to do what the point the one we all really understand is that the inability to have somebody else to do that necessary labor and the fact that as women, it's our work, whether we are doing it professionally for wage or whether we're doing an unpaid as all of us as normal people aren't taken care of normal needs. We still need to save money in order to be able to pay someone to do the work or to do that work ourselves and

Unknown Speaker  1:09:27
anyone else can make the connection that if women are paid, immediately cuts them off from entering other labor force activities. That this is a question that because it is then validated economically, as women's work that women then in terms of entering the LEC don't destroy now. Someone

Unknown Speaker  1:09:58
responded that way. My son, I think that's true, I think that we can look at examples like the family allowance in Britain, as an example of wages for housework, which is a, which is really a very, very small amount. And the cost of women is a way of keeping them in a home. There's no evidence that it's up, changed their lives upgraded and brought them into society in full or equal, participating way. And I think it's a very different strategy and way of talking about housework than the one that counts. I don't know if any Laurel floral was talking about in terms of legitimating,

Unknown Speaker  1:10:37
the force, in a sense that

Unknown Speaker  1:10:42
looks at it as work that is fully conscious, and legitimate, and has a full revelation of benefits and protections organized by the workers themselves.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:52
There is a connection, however, between the two perspectives, which is to say that if you want something to have the professional status and be considered as the regular full time occupation, it sure helps, if there aren't a lot of people out there doing it for nothing. And that it becomes much more comprehensible to people that that really is a trade or profession, an occupation, when there are other, you know, millions of other people doing it for free.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:32
To the point that I think that the connection that we have is the value that's placed on the Lord. Okay, really the true value that's painted, where I have a problem with women being put into a position being put back and being paid this way. And I think that I would ticularly in this crowd, the more and more because I feel basically, that being a feminist, I feel that if there's a male who wants to stay home that why isn't that male being given a thing, too, I mean, it puts us in a very peculiar position. And I think that that's something I think, in theory, the idea of hell, I'd certainly like to pay, but then I also feel that it undercuts me as a professional household worker, because then someone said, well, then it means that you can get more money, come on work, and because I have to, I happen to enjoy what I'm doing. But given the options, I would prefer not to with some time, and see I don't have those options. Now, and then there's a whole lot of other things I like to really dwell on the connections that we have, as opposed to the because I think it's two different issues. Okay. And I really think the issue, and if we get it sort of money up, we sort of lose our perspective on the issue of the pain household word here. The issue of wages for house work. Okay. I think that there is a connection. But I think that that's a very, you know, the connection is

Unknown Speaker  1:13:21
the I think the connection essentially is there, but I think it's another conference to it. Certainly. There were some points when we left you.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:38
Your question? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:40
You mentioned the tailgate. And I just wanted to ask you, whether, in fact, we know that participation in houses. And that is it because there's a lot of competition. Oh, man, like organized in commercial services. Has that has that conditions worse for black women?

Unknown Speaker  1:14:07
Well, it certainly has been a difficulty. I don't think that that is the core problem. I think. For instance, in the Midwest,