About a hundred years ago, women spent eight hours a day on average doing housework. I don't know about you, but after an hour I've reached my limit. Time to kick back and do some blogging...
Today Canadian women spend on average 3.6 hours per day on housework, which still composes the lion's share. Men, of course, do more than they used to (2.4 hours per day!), but let's not kid ourselves – our standards are considerably lower. That means the bathroom gets cleaned on a monthly as opposed to a weekly basis.
A malleable solution to the gender divide is to hire a house cleaner. I've read that once your house is over 3,000 square feet, hiring a cleaner is all but inevitable. We don't quite meet that threshold.
About 10 years ago, I read some interesting articles about a journalist who went undercover as a house cleaner in Ontario. Jan Wong got first-hand experience of how the women in this trade tend to be treated. Not so good, as it turns out. Despite the physical toll of the job, there's little sympathy from employers and even less monetary compensation. I've read that some companies make their maids wash the floor on their knees simply because of the optics. Mopping doesn't look as good, even though it's proven to be just as effective.
It harkens back to the early 1900s when women toiled in laundromats for twelve hours followed by more housework at home. Suffragette is an enlightening film that portrays that time period while following the lives of women in London who advocated for the right to vote. Hunted down by police and imprisoned regularly, they risked everything for equality, including their own children (the father had all legal rights). They were a persecuted minority who would open the doors to greater liberty and equality for half the population – everything we take for granted today.
A lot has changed, but some things have stayed the same. Women still occupy some of the lowest rungs of the economic ladder with jobs that pay less than men.
There appears to be the expectation that they can make do with less. I recall a manager telling a female co-worker that she shouldn't complain about her pay because her husband makes enough. That was about 15 years ago and I doubt such a statement would go without repercussions today.
But the differences in pay remain. I recently learned that a hairdresser, who is required to have a journeyman's certificate after a full year of schooling, typically makes minimum wage with tips. This is a wage for students going to university, not for a woman with a family. The hairdresser I know was told that in ten years she can expect to be making more. But that's if she can pick up her pace – maybe do three to four cuts in an hour as opposed to two.
One could argue all day about why wages are the way they are: Demand and supply, lack of a union, or the nature of work (which is ludicrous – a skilled hairdresser should be paid as much as another tradesperson).
The underlying issue is that female-dominated professions tend to be underpaid. How else can only explain the pittance public school teachers get paid in the U.S.? If it were a male-dominated profession, sub-standard wages wouldn't be tolerated.
Women have traditionally made do with less, but they're beginning to mobilize. The teacher strikes in the U.S. are a testament to that.
Despite the progress of the last 100 years, there are still battles to be fought.
No comments:
Post a Comment