Reinventing the Housewife

Feminist scholars and June Cleaver agree: Housework will never go away.

Thanks to advances made by our foremothers who fought the good feminist fight to equalize women in this country, we are free from the shackles of most expectations: No longer encouraged to stay home and keep house, women are given just as much opportunity as men to get an education, seek gainful employment, earn their own income and live independent of any financial caretaker.

In the 1950s, women primarily stayed home where they scrubbed dishes, washed clothes, vacuumed floors, made beds, dusted, washed windows, and cooked dinner. Today, women with full- or part-time jobs still primarily scrub dishes, wash clothes, vacuum floors, make beds, dust, wash windows and cook dinner.

Hypothetically, women can be financially free. But realistically, we're still shackled by the social expectations that come with being the "weaker sex," a hidden (or not so hidden) undercurrent that still ripples through the subconscious of our society. Whether we do it to ourselves by being the first in the kitchen after dinner preparing a sink full of hot, soapy water, or whether it is done to us by husbands who settle into the butt-groove they've formed in the couch over the years, it is still being done to us.

Which leads one to ask, "Is there such thing as women's work?"

A nest built of genes

For nine months, prehistoric woman grew fat and unwieldy before painfully bringing forth a tiny, weak person into the world. This tiny infant, during most of its waking hours, would attach itself to the woman's breast, sometimes for years. It needed to be coddled to sleep, and it needed to be guarded constantly as it lacked any means of self-defense. Growing at a slow pace, this infant would need to be taken care of for over a decade before it could reasonably survive on its own. Obviously, this is time-consuming business for a woman, prehistoric or modern. It would then make sense that the woman would stay in one central location, making a comfortable place for her to raise her child.

Man, free of the symptoms of pregnancy and the task of breastfeeding, was more capable of leaving the domicile to gather food. You can draw your own parallels between then and now.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this set-up. In fact, had this prehistoric "Leave it to Beaver" never been acted out, life as we know it might cease to exist. Quite simply, this just worked.

The institution of money and capital made the idea of working outside of the home a lucrative business, and slowly "women's work" became seen as something negative simply because it didn't bring in income. With a narrow mind, the women's rights movement focused on equalizing women with men in a masculine world, which not only said, "We are strong enough to do what you do," but also said, "We are too weak to fight against your paradigm."

It's really not oppressing me, I promise

Women can be whatever they want to be these days. We are thankfully given the choice to compete in a man's world if we want to, and it is in the great victory of choice that we are free from oppression: We are not forced to do anything.

However, despite all the victories and all the advances, one truth still remains: Dishes will get dirty, clothes will need laundered, floors will need vacuumed, beds will need to be made, furniture will need to be dusted, windows will need to be washed and dinner will need to be cooked. And women will still do it.

Yes, there is still such a thing as a women's work, and the term "Housewife" needs to stop being a taboo whispered about in knitting circles held in dark alleys far from sensitive politically-correct ears. Regardless of the name you give it, housework is a necessity and it's here to stay. Let's at least have some fun with it!