I can't remember when I wrote this essay. Now I see the value recording the dates, but the earliest copy of this essay I can find in the web archive is June 2000, so it's at least twenty-six years old.
Anyway,
Most people dismiss the idea of wages for housework out-of-hand. The whole idea is superficially so utterly inane as to defy consideration. In my view, the insanity of the whole idea guarantees that it will eventually become a reality. Politicians will pretend the demands are valid and will implement various programs to ensure that yet another sacred entitlement will be born.
In the October issue of "Elm Street" the brilliant Canadian feminist, Judy Rebick, cites a 1992 Statistics Canada survey which calculated the value of work people do for themselves and their offspring in Canada at between $159 and $198 billion annually (Canada's GDP in 1992 was about $688 billion). Mz. Rebick then remarks, "Yet, society gives our work in the home, whether full- or part-time, almost no recognition." What Mz. Rebick means here is that "society" doesn't pay us for work we do for ourselves. It is also clear that what Mz. Rebick means is that government doesn't force taxpayers to pay strangers who do their own housework.
Mz Rebick cites the StatsCan figures as though they mean something special about work done for one's self, but it's obvious they cover only those informal jobs traditionally seen as being "women's work". Similar stats could be compiled for all kinds of informal work people engage in while not trading their time and effort for money. Such activities would include fixing the car, taking out the garbage, driving oneself to various destinations and engaging in other activities like sports, crafts and lovemaking.
Sometimes there are choices to be made between performing certain kinds of work for one's self or paying someone else to do the work. Thus you can cook your own meals or go to a restaurant, walk or take a cab, clean the house or hire a maid. Other activities are more or less restricted to self doing - such as excretion of bodily wastes(untaxed - so far), learning how to walk and speak and do calculus(untaxed - so far), scratching one's butt(untaxed - so far), smoking cigarettes (heavily taxed - in a sense the government has formalized the work people do for themselves while smoking and cigarette taxes are merely another form of income tax.) and so on.
"It's estimated that the work women do in the home is worth billions annually, but they don't see a penny for it. That's rich." says Mz. Rebick. The same could be said of all the hours that go into finding a compatible mate - an activity which, as we shall see from the ravings included (below) of various tribal feminists, is an activity currently suffering enormously from the artificial construct of "private versus public." (See my essay on Sexual Socialism)
Of course, the tribal feminists argue that the work they do in the home has enormous value compared to all of the other work people do. This entire belief is based on the idea that the subjective opinions of these tribal feminists can be objectively verified, which is nonsense. To quote the famous Enzo Camposilvan, "you are only worth what someone is willing to pay you."
Clearly, the vast majority of those people who work full time in the home while a spouse works for wages outside the home are paid for what they do in accordance with the agreements they have entered into with their spouses or partners. If this were not true then where do they get the clothes they wear, the food they eat and the beds they sleep in? In most, of these arrangements, the whole wage or salary is not paid directly in the form of cash but rather in the form of goods and services that require the exchange of cash. An individual who works in the home thus receives a cash equivalent for part or all of their contribution to the domestic enterprise. In other words, they are paid.
This form of payment in goods and services rather than cash, and from the beneficiary to the supplier of the work is considered unsatisfactory by tribal feminists. They believe they have superior knowledge regarding the value of services performed by people who work in the home, that this mysterious value can be measured in terms of the dominant medium of exchange, and that in every case it exceeds the value of goods and services already received by the home worker in accordance with the domestic contract (even though each contract is unique.) In other words, tribal feminists believe they have within their grasp the answer to the modern equivalent of the old question about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
An internet search (I used dogpile an apt vehicle.) on the Wages for Housework miasma yields little more than arrogant assertion in lieu of any reasonable attempt to justify this demand.
According to the NEWSLETTER OF THE GLOBAL NETWORK FOR RURAL WOMEN page on the International Wages for Housework Campaign,
Women do unwaged work within the family, as subsistence farmers and other family businesses and as carers and community workers. This "women's work" is the basic ingredient of profits and essential to he(sic) survival and functioning of every society.The claim that subsistence farming is one of the basic ingredients of profits and he(sic) survival and functioning of every society is quite revealing. It encapsulates the logic of the wages for housework campaign rather well. It does so by proving that those clamoring for wages for housework are really just begging for handouts. They want to be paid for work they do for themselves.
Does the claim that the fortunes of profitable companies depend upon the existence of subsistence farming deserve analysis? Subsistence farmers have little or no surplus to exchange for dollars. Without dollars they can't buy anything. How does this lack of purchasing power contribute to profits? Nor do subsistence farmers represent a significant force with regard to investment. In what way does the subsistence farmer, producing barely enough (or not enough) for bare survival, unable to purchase goods or invest in business, provide one of the ingredients essential to the survival of "every society"?
If subsistence farming is so essential to profit making why are the richest countries apparently those which rely least upon it?
The International Wages for Housework Campaign page tells us women do unwaged work as "carers" which is also a basic ingredient of profits. This fits in with the tribal feminist notion that children belong to the tribe. Women who take care of children are therefore not so much caring for their own children as taking care of the tribe's children. In accordance with the tribalist feminist way of thinking therefore, the tribe should pay for this service.
If the children belong to the tribe do they ever cease to belong to the tribe? Obviously not, in accordance with this tribal feminist ideology... since it is the wages earned by adult tribe members that must be confiscated in order to pay the "wages" of the "carers". If the "carers" really care about the children they are raising how willing should they be to effectively sell their own children into adult bondage in order that their "caring" be adequately remunerated in the present?
Yeh, Mz. Rebick, maybe some of us who stay home to look after the kids would rather not be a party to this ugly scheme, accepting political bribes today so that our own children can live in bondage to the philoprogenitive choices of complete strangers when they grow up. I would rather see my children grow up free to make their own reproductive decisions (and accept the responsibility for them) without interference or help from the state, likewise unencumbered by statist confiscations to subsidize choices made by others.
Even Mz. Hillary Rodham Clinton is on the wages for housework bandwagon (surprise?). According to another tribal feminist web page under the heading "Hillary Rodham Clinton comes out for counting women's unwaged work", in an address on March 12, 1997 Hillary said,
"I have had many experts in economic development around the world say to me that women's work is not part of the economies of countries, that women do not participate in the economic markets of countries."How does one who spouts such unmitigated crapola manage to have any credibility? Note Mz. Clinton is relaying two separate ideas here:
- experts have said "women's work" presumably referring to housework and child rearing is not part of the economies of countries (and/or/or not at all) that,
- experts also said or meant that women do not participate in the economies of countries. Which "experts" was she consulting? The medicine men of some isolated tribe in some stagnant jungle? Is it credible that experts in North America or Europe told Mz. Clinton that women do not participate? Where does Mz. Clinton go for such "expert" consultation and why would she choose to repeat such nonsense as though it were widely believed by rather less silly economic "experts"?
Mz. Clinton continues to switch contexts in the rambling mish-mash quoted on that website. Mz. Clinton says,
"If all the women in the world tomorrow said they would not work outside the home, the economies of every country would collapse. And it is time -- (applause) -- it is time that we honored and counted the contributions that women make, both in the home and outside."Since millions of women worldwide work outside the home it does not sound entirely implausible that, were they all to say they would not work outside the home, or worse, if they actually refused to work outside the home (the tribal feminist version of Atlas Shrugged?) the world's economy would collapse, or at least suffer rather extreme dislocation for a period of time. (same goes for men). It does not follow at all that we must therefore count the contributions women make both in the home and outside. (Note: First we count, then we employ the skills of the Rebicks of the world to recite the figures and moan "It's estimated that the work women do in the home is worth billions annually, but they don't see a penny for it. That's rich." Obviously all this lobbying done by tribal feminists to have some fictional dollar amount attached to housework is merely a preliminary step toward the demand for cold hard cash.)
Mz. Clinton's context switching seems calculated to specifically bamboozle the gullible. Considering the constituency to whom she is obviously appealing in this instance it is not difficult to understand why she would use this approach. On the other hand, perhaps this is how Hillary really thinks.
The garb in which this farcical idea comes wrapped can be quite sophisticated. Consider this gem from the Mothers are Women (MAW) website:
"Calling unpaid caregiving work is a progressive step in the reformulation of our understanding of how economies are structured. If we maintain that economies are by their nature collective, then the argument that caregiving is private within that understanding is a non-sequitur. The proposition that caregiving is economically productive work takes caregiving out of the private and into the public and renders more permeable the artificial construct of private versus public."Of course, "if we maintain", as tribalists of every variety do, that "economies are by their nature collective" then taking care of one's own children, who will grow up to become workers in this vast ant colony, becomes nothing more than harvesting human beings for the disposition of the collective. No wonder the tribal feminists seem to honestly believe they should be paid for raising the next generation's drones.
To the cloistered mentality of the tribal feminist this bullshit has enormous appeal. To the remainder of us, those who have the audacity to believe we have the right to choose and pursue our own goals the "artificial construct of private versus public" remains extremely important.
Individual human beings, by their natures, require a tangible degree of personal autonomy. The "artificial construct of private versus public" is therefore vital. Attempts by the tribal feminists to render such autonomy increasingly "permeable" may well succeed so long as politicians, for the most part, remain whores.
If this does happen and if our understanding of how economies are structured is "reformulated" in accordance with these tribal feminist precepts the attending economic collapse will make the tribal feminist version of Atlas Shrugged look like a taxi driver strike. That too would be rich.
