| Home truths for
feminists How should the work women do as mothers be rewarded? Selma James and Melissa Benn argue about carers and careers Take two, Guardian, Saturday 21 February 2004 Melissa Benn is a writer and
journalist whose books include Madonna and child:Towards a New Politics
of Motherhood. Hi Selma, Thinking back to the 1980s when Wages for Housework campaigned so
militantly for just such a proposal, and were opposed just as passionately
by virtually all feminists, including my younger self, I just wondered whether you feel: victory at last? Or do you have a few sneaking worries
now that the right has taken up your ideological cudgels? Dear Melissa, You're right: in 1972 when we began, most feminists did oppose wages for unwaged work. But working class women who were unlikely to identify as feminists never did. We were told that to be liberated, a woman had to "go to work": why couldn't a woman be more like a man? Many working class women were already struggling with a low-paid jobs on top of caring work, which hadn't liberated them one inch. We argued that this caring work, which produced the world's workers, had to be recognised: measured, valued and paid for. Many feminists pointed to Margaret Thatcher as a role model; she pushed single mothers off benefits and "into work". Socialist feminists were keen to tell us that women's consciousness would be raised at the "point of production"; Labour used this to push mothers, starting with single mothers, off benefits and "into work". We argued: why can't a man be more like a woman! About time we had this discussion again. Dear Selma But if we're not careful, we'll be told that we're hard-wired for caring and men for earning. This, as I remember, was the major worry about Wages for Housework all those years ago, and for me, it remains. Forget Thatcher. Modern feminists insist, rightly, on the importance of mothers remaining in the work world with their hard-earned talents to contribute, and their desire to matter undiminished. Yet it's proved much bloody harder than it should, because the structures of work have not shifted to allow both parents to care and work and yet remain recognisably human. Isn't this a key question for our times? Dear Melissa, Why glorify work outside the home? How many women are professionals? How
many men? Most of us go out, get exploited, grab the dosh and run. Dear Selma, So how can government help them do that? Extra money might just mean more dosh for consumer durables for middle England, and lower benefits for poorer women. Call me cynical, but I suspect that's the Tory agenda. So, yes, by all means, let's pay carers, as long as men are also entitled to the money. But I'd still like more public child care, not 12-hour-a-day baby farms but something flexible like the government's Children's Centres. All caring should earn pension credits, too. The scandal of female
pensioner poverty, usually the price of a lifetime of caring for others,
has gone on long enough. Dear Melissa, And class divides are strong as ever, I'm afraid. Internationally, women grow 80% of food consumed in Africa and over 60% in Asia, yet are officially "economically inactive". Any wonder that women are 70% of the world's poor? Women in Venezuela point the way. They won Article 88 in their constitution which "recognises work at home as an economic activity that creates value ? Housewives are entitled to social security". This includes the pension you propose. As for women wasting carers' wages on "consumer durables", it's theirs, and
they can do what they damn well please with it. Men do. Dear Selma, So I still insist on womens' right to create meaning out of their lives
beyond the hugely important job of caring. And I don't think it's a class
thing. I think it's a human thing. Dear Melissa, If women got wages for it, would we be institutionalised at home? Not in Norway or Finland. Let's have a little respect for what women will do with power. As caring work is recognised, we win leverage, not just for careers for a few, but to create what Venezuelan women call "a caring economy, an economy at the service of human beings rather than human beings at the service of the economy". Men in Britain have the longest working week in Europe. This is no basis
for fathers' liberation. We must stop glorifying the work men do and invite
them to take part in caring. If we're not segregated, demeaned, discriminated and impoverished by it, as is true with women now, caring is
the most civilising work of all. Read the full exchange at www.guardian.co.uk/comment |