Retro Sexism: Laundry will set you free!
This would be funny if not for this: The Vatican agrees with our 50s commercial heroines; their newspaper says that the washing machine did more to liberate modern women than birth control or the "right" to work outside the home. Yeah.
Thanks to Natalie for the video!
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Retro Sexism: Laundry will set you free!.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/12425
When I was in the Peace Corps, I had to do all the laundry by hand. It was grueling work, broke my back and chapped my hands. It was time consuming, and I'm only talking about my clothes, which were small and I made sure to wear multiple times before I washed them.
My married female friends did this for themselves, their husbands and children. It could be a full time job. So, do I think that the washing machine is responsible for emancipation more than the right to vote? Of course not. But let's not kid ourselves that washing machines did nothing for women. It saves us every day from backbreaking labor.
I don't disagree with your assessment regards it being back breaking (been there done that) but to claim it liberated women more than the pill is an attempt to marginalize the revolutionary impact the pill had on women's lives.
I think if you asked my great gran (who died in childbirth giving birth to her 11th child) she would have preferred the pill over a washing machine, which is nothing more than a convenient modern tool that women of her class could ill afford anyway.
Are you saying that it's our responsibility to wash our husbands/partner's and kids clothing??? I can understand taking turns with your husband but not doing all of it. Otherwise, it doesn't seem in any way liberating.
Did you actually read my comment? I didn't say anything about whether women should wash the clothes. I'm saying all women there DID wash everyone's clothes. And I couldn't imagine how they did it.
Is it really that different from here? Women should not be the official cleaning person of the house. But as we can see all across the country, that is the reality of the situation. I am saying that washing machines saved these women from an early old age and death from backbreaking labor.
E-man...cipation? OH-hohoho.
Although, there is something to be said about technological advancement in the domestic realm. Without said advancements, do you think we'd have made the same advancements in finding work outside the home? Can you imagine men agreeing to split the chores, or even adopting a work-at-home dad position as they sometimes do today?
Hell naw. And as a side note, dad's streaky underwear must have been straight up nasty to wash by hand. All hail the washing machine.
Still, suffrage was pretty freaking neat.
Laundry used to be a day long chore, and depending on the size of your family had to be done multiple times a week. Now it requires an hour of effort.
Fuck the Vatican, but it's hardly sexism to recognize that reducing the work required to be done at home enabled women to actually get rights. Even consider that the women agitating for rights had to do cooking and cleaning to.
No question that appliances are fabulous things.
How about the priests actually taking the wine stains out of their OWN vestments instead of a volunteer lady doing the dirty work? Father Pablo and Spray-n-Wash? The Magic Eraser working miracles at the church supper?
I'd still love to see a Tide commercial with Dad or - heaven forbid - the older kids doing the laundry, or an Electrolux commercial with Mark Consuelos doing the laundry and baking the cookies to the Bewitched theme. How about a Swiffer and a frat house? Tilex and the Bachelor?
Here is my take on modern conveniences, they are great but we survived without them. women however didn't survive constant childbearing and the drudgery that came with it.
I wish I could find it on youtube, but I've been seeing a new Pillsbury commercial for biscuits in which the dad is in charge of breakfast. It was a breath of fresh air.
This! I suppose talking to God (and being a man) means that you're too good to do laundry. Amirite?
Personally, I started doing my own laundry at age 10. My mother was surprised and pleased, but it had more to do with my own embarrassment at what I was beginning to find in my panties than out of any wish to help her out. In that way, washing machines helped me to avoid facing my parents re the topic of my budding sexuality, which, in a religiously conservative household, mostly consisted of terse comments and me faking innocence in order to appease the parental units. *shudder*
I love how men can't be seen vacuuming or scrubbing in commercials (I've complained to Swiffer about it; they claim they have had a man cleaning in their commercials, don't know for sure) but they can be seen SELLING these items that perhaps they've invented. The bearded OxyClean guy. The creepy Sham-Wow guy. They can make money and fame off selling these products, but can't be seen demonstrating the products in a domestic setting. And to top it off, the spokesmen always have a woman by their side asking questions and acting completely clueless, yet happy to be learning how to do her "duty" more efficiently.
Also I have to wonder which women they are talking about that were liberated? Are they meaning the one's that could afford a washing machine. I never knew anybody growing up on a housing estate in the northeast of England during the late 60's late 70's that had washing machines (houses were not built to accommodate them at the time). We washed by hand, used a hand wringer and hung on the line, or kids lugged the laundry to the local laundromat if they could afford it).
the house i grew up in was built in the early 50s and had a wash tub in the basement with grooves to handwash - we went to the laundromat, though. when we finally "made it" and could afford our own washing machine, that's were the water drained.
Yes laundry machines are a useful appliance, however as the first commenter wrote, when you have to wash clothes by hand you tend to hold off on washing your clothes until absolutly necessary, which is better for the enviornment (soap and water use) also from experience when appliances are introduced women tend to have to do said chore more often because the expectations go up, so say you only cleaned your carpet once a month, now with the vacuum you would have to vacuum everyday or every other day because the appliance makes things "easier". So yea appliances do make these chores a little bit easier, but they dont divide the labor between genders so I don't think they are liberating, I actually think they are a reason to enforce women in the home.
Yep, your point is spot on, didn't divide the labor. Women were liberated, went to work, but still came home and did ALL the flipping housework because men didn't do laundry, machine or not.
That was exactly my reaction to the idea of washing machine = liberation. It's like suggesting that letting child labourers use sewing machines rather than hand sewing our clothes is somehow emancipating. I think anyone would agree that the fact that children are being paid next to nothing, working long hours and not getting a childhood is the problem, rather than the workload relative to 50 years ago.
I reckon the pill is a big one, plus the right to decide who I marry and when, should I even decide to pair up. These are the big things that have allowed me to choose a research career path while shacked up with the future Mr.
Appliances certainly make things easier (I doubt my fiance would take do all my washing according to various protocols with a smile without a washing machine), but as others mentioned objects & practices which came out of the 50's culture of appliances arguably created more work for women.
I agree. I was in a college class (not a women's studies course) where we learned that despite popular belief and advertisement all of the modern appliances did not save women that much time and labor because the expectations for cleanliness rose. I also have to think that the time and labor saved by not having twelve kids because of the pill outweighs that saved by a washing machine.
funny, i use a clothes line 80+% of the time to liberate myself from ridiculously high utility bills.
I love the washing machine. My hubby uses it as much as I do, and I would say that it made washing clothes much more accessible to both sexes. Also, in my effort to be more grateful I am trying to remember to keep in mind the millions of (usually women)around the world who DON'T have a washing machine around the house, when I do my laundry. It helps keep me grounded when I want to complain about cleaning shit up.
FWIW, I can't blame you because once the AP says it, nobody bothers to look, but here is my obligatory correction:
Yet again "The VAtican" is blamed for saying something that somebody NOT speaking for the Vatican said.
If you read Italian, look it up.
It was a female columnist in the Vatican newspaper offering an opinion piece on the topic of "technology that has doe the most for women."
(Suggestion to all who care about fairness and accuracy in reportin, even wrt to organizations they love to hate: If it says "the Vatican says...", always make an attempt to determine WHO it was. /PSA)
So yeah, voting rights are pretty great, and the right to work outside the home: both better than the washing machine... but wouldn't qualify for the topic of technology. Abortion and the Pill? Did you expect the main Catholic newspaper to claim they were better?
It's completely demeaning. Yeah, ok, I get that saving time = good, but people seriosuly arguing this was part of liberation for women? Liberation to do what? Clean other things, more chores? It would have been liberating if it required men to do an equal amount of the work.
My favorite part is when the one suggests that women getting the vote was really important, and the other one says "you dummy!" If it weren't for that, and the bit about the washing machine being an advancement that "all women can understand," I could almost care about the points everyone else is making about handwashing being backbreaking.
I hestitate to say anything but here goes.
In an ecconomic determinist type argument they have a point. Basically people have to be freed from backbreaking labour before they can give time to what are considered intelectual pursuits.
The division of labour in the days before electricity and modern convienience wasn't any picnic for men either. My great uncle fell from a tree, and died at 35 in a logging camp. Hell my grandfather was fond of telling people that his mother taught all 7 boys to cook, wash, and iron as well as the 2 girls. This was in the days of the big heavy sad irons and that truly was backbreaking labour. In my humble opinion the best acount of what this pre-electric life was like can be found in Robert Caro's The Path to Power.
Interestingly enough, the argument that electricity and the washing machine did more for women's rights, as much as it is supported by anecdotal evidence virginia wolf had a maid etc, is undermined when one looks at the history of voting rights in western states. The western states gave women the right to vote far earlier than eastern states with Wyoming actually having Women's sufferage written into its territorial consitution. However many households in the west actually had to wait until Rural Electrification Programs of the 1930's to recieve the modern convieniences that eastern women had access to much earlier.
This is one of those issues where I don't think either side is entirely right. Its incredibly hard to say that just one thing went into the liberation or the oppression of women when really it wasn't just women that were liberated but men too.
Fascinating post. I live with my sister but we split every thing. I do her laundry some times when she has had to work a lot of hours. I also cook most of the meals mainly because I have this mental block about a woman cooking my food because of the oppression of women by forcing traditional roles on them.( I don’t think I would have much appetite) I also mend my own cloths as well as sew a little. I don’t need a woman to slave over the trivia of my life. The idea is sickening.