Reevaluating What’s Essential: The Role of Housework in the Pandemic
The burden on mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic is the result of years of oppression through the devaluation of unwaged work and the expectation of sacrifice by women for the social factory. I first use Dalla Costa and James’s theory of the social factory from their chapter, “The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community” to position myself against traditional Marxist thinking. I then move to outline the role of the woman concerning the factory, heavily leaning on Silvia Federici’s “Revolution at Point Zero” essays. Finally, I relate these concepts to the current COVID-19 pandemic and offer a solution through Kathi Week’s theory of basic income, described in her chapter “Working Demands, From Wages for Housework to Basic Income.”
Our present capitalist economy, read from a Marxist perspective, is a relationship between the haves and the have nots. The divide between the worker and those who own the means of production is the wage. As commodities have both a use-value and an exchange-value, workers producing things of exchange-value are those receiving a wage. Anything lacking exchange-value, existing outside of wage work, is considered valueless. While commodities of the home (housework, childcare, and emotional care) are necessary for production, they lack exchange-value and therefore are seen as valueless in society. The home is a hidden partner within the system. The theory of the social factory employed by Dalla Costa and James is a way to bring to light the interdependencies between the home and the factory (16). The true length of the working day doesn’t end at the factory gates; it extends into all parts of life. The social factory expands who is involved in the wage relationship beyond the haves and the have nots. The social factory sheds light on an invisible third player in the capitalist system, a role that women historically fill.
What traditional Marxist theory often fails to consider is the unique relation of women to the wage. Women, as those blessed with the ability for reproduction, have been defined under capitalism as responsible for raising children. The role of the “mother” is tied to an expectation to care for all those around her as well. Her husband, her parents, her children, and her community are dependent on her ability to perform necessary household tasks. As Federici presents in her essays, housework is assumed to be naturally feminine, and every woman is expected to aspire to serve others simply because she is genetically a woman (16).
Housework is not seen as work, so women are not seen as workers. Rather, housework is a “labor of love;” a sacrifice of a mother’s freedom to serve those around her (Federici, 17). Housework is a social contract, existing outside of the wage relation but still necessary for the function of production. Housework is a pillar of the social factory. Yet, women are consistently and historically undervalued in their work. The actual costs of reproduction and housework are concealed (Weeks, 137). If American women made minimum wage for the work they did around the house and caring for relatives, they’d have earned $1.5 trillion in 2019 (Kisner, 2021). Capitalism manipulates women by making them slaves to the system. Their work doesn’t produce a wage, so it is invisible.
In our current society, the remedy for the struggle against the wage is more work. Work is the pathway to empowerment and equality. The idealization of “the hustle” or “the grind”, amassing income from multiple sources and turning hobbies into forms of wage, is prevalent in our culture. The worker has become more productive and those who cannot keep up are left 3 behind, in the form of lower pay or fewer promotions. If a woman chooses to participate, she is ushered into paid service or care work. Women working in male-dominated fields are expected to be perfect in the home and perfect at work. Women do two jobs regardless, and participation is only allowed if she can first fill the responsibility at home.
Motherhood is seen as a burden to productivity, and success under the system can only be ensured by the help of social programs or care labor amassing some of that burden. Sending children to after-school activities, hiring maid services, and gig-economy jobs like Insta-Cart are all ways that mothers can release some of the burden of reproductive work under capitalism. Yet, this is only available to those who can afford it, and increasingly lower-income women are left to fend for themselves. A job only increases the exploitation of the woman, because she cannot clock out from being a mother (Federici, 29). Housework is a hidden constant in a woman’s daily life.
The social factory ensures that the time, space, and relations of the workday extend far beyond working hours and spaces (Weeks, 142). While Weeks argues in her chapter that in the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism the line between work and life has blurred, I want to point out that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the line has dissolved completely. As Helaine Olen discusses in her opinion for The Washington Post, “The pandemic is devastating a generation of working women”, “remote working, celebrated for offering flexibility, results in many, many more hours on the work clock.” Work has spilled over into every corner of our lives. Kitchens are used as offices, places to study, and places to play on top of places to cook.
As a result, women are suffering. With schools online, it is a mother’s job to keep their kids on track and offer study help. It is a mother’s job to be available at all hours of the day for physical and emotional labor. Those with jobs now conducted over Zoom are expected to find time alone from their kids to work. Those considered “essential” are expected to continue to show up to work while their kids stay home. Whatever balance previously existed between work and housework has crumbled. With little-to-no help from government systems, women are bearing the brunt of labor.
For women who can afford it, the primary option of survival has been to leave work to stay at home full time. The demand for housework is too severe for many women to be able to take on a job outside of the home. Yet, this work is entirely invisible and assumed. Women are “essential” but not under the current standard of an essential worker. The CDC defines “essential” workers on their website as “those who conduct a range of operations and services in industries that are essential to ensure the continuity of critical functions in the United States (U.S.).” They list healthcare, first responders, food, and agriculture, grocery, education, transportation, and manufacturing. Nowhere on the list of about 200 positions is the job of the homemaker. As mentioned before, a woman’s work is outside of the money economy, so women's work carries no value. It doesn’t receive any special recognition or classification.
The pandemic has hit the women in “essential” positions even harder. Women, especially Black and Brown women, tend to work in positions that require interaction with the customers. These low-wage jobs lack benefits like paid leave and health insurance. The workers themselves experience a greater risk of contracting coronavirus. An article in the New York Times Magazine by Jordan Kinser points out that just over half of essential workers are women and disproportionately women of color. Simultaneously, these are also the women most likely to lose their jobs due to labor cuts. In December 2020 alone, 156,000 Black and Brown women lost their jobs, while white women gained 15,000 jobs (Kisner, 2021).
The treatment of essential workers as “heroes” in reference to their daily “sacrifice” is a cause of capitalism. The clapping at 7pm, the signs on the front yard, and the blessings from the upper class on social media are all methods of reminding the working class of how much is riding on their success as producers. Their essentialism is a way to entrap them until hit by furlough and layoffs in times of extreme crisis.
The ideology of the family is another tool currently being used to entrap workers. Federici argued that “it is the essence of capitalist ideology to glorify the family as a “private world,” the last frontier where men and women “keep their souls alive” (35). In her view, capitalist planners use the family in times of crisis and hardship. Right now, people are told to rely on their immediate, nuclear family. We are being told to rely on love to keep us together. The act of wives and mothers is the ultimate sacrifice of love, picking up the slack of everyone else during the pandemic, carrying the emotional burden of the family, while performing the duty of the woman daily. By glorifying the role of the family against the daily struggle of work, women are only further enslaved to the home.
The fanatical thinking of the left is not enough to remedy this problem. To “return to normalcy” as the left believes, every job lost must be restored. Women, who are already devalued for their work will have a harder time competing in the job market post-pandemic. Children will also probably require increased care after a year of online school. Women will continuously have to sacrifice their freedom to deal with the effects of the pandemic. Instead of trying to reestablish the work/life balance that never really existed, I join Weeks in arguing that a basic livable income is necessary for the revitalization of society.
Under a basic guaranteed income, individuals would receive money regardless of income and employment history or status (Weeks, 138). The income provided would be enough to allow 6 waged work to become a choice instead of a necessity. As Weeks describes, by refusing the notion that waged work is the only legitimate means of access to a minimal standard of living, life is no longer subordinate to work (146). I should note that I prefer the idea of a basic income more than the argument that Federici provides for Wages for Housework because I think basic income can be modernized to include a broader coalition of people who do not identify with the character of the housewife that Wages for Housework rely on.
While the demand for basic income can seem far-fetched and utopian, the pandemic has opened a bigger window than before for societal change. As Kinser notes in her article, “Increasingly, even those relatively unscathed by the pandemic are voicing anti-capitalist sentiment, critiquing an economy that underpays or ignores domestic labor.” This is no longer a struggle of low-income mothers against the system. Upper-class and middle-class women are becoming conscious of the amount they rely on service work. Society as a whole is realizing how much previously considered “unskilled” labor is essential to the functioning of day-to-day life. The enormous constituency of workers created by those suffering from work right now has the potential to be powerful in the face of capitalism. It’s time to stop considering their work as sacrifices and time to provide a basic livable wage to all in the system. Without it, women will never be free from the responsibility of housework and the women affected by the pandemic will not recover. ◆
Works Cited
Dalla Costa, Mariarosa. James, Selma. The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community, Falling Wall Press, 1975.
Federici, Silvia. Cox, Nicole “Counterplanning from the Kitchen” Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, The Falling Wall Press, 1975, 23-40
Federici, Silvia. “Wages Against Housework” Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, The Power of Women Collective and The Falling Wall Press, 1975, 15-22
Kisner, Jordan. The Lockdown Showed How the Economy Exploits Women. She Already Knew. The New York Times Magazine.
Olen, Helaine. Opinion: The pandemic is devastating a generation of working women. The Washington Post.
Weeks, Kathi. “Working Demands: From Wages for Housework to Basic Income.” The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries, Duke University Press, 2011, 113-150