Domestic Work Response: Women and Gender Studies, Essay Example

Arlie Russell Hochschild’s “Love and Gold” and ______ Mitchell’s “The Job Today” provide readings of gender, economic and societal trends in domestic labor. Particularly, the authors approach these trends through an examination of what may be termed the economics of globalization, insofar as the texts introduce the experiences of female immigrant workers in America. It is the experiences of female domestic workers that are the focus of the essays, as their particular experiences are interpreted in terms of a certain socially and economically created racial bias that suggests a new form of imperialism. In the following, we shall summarize Hochschild and Mitchell’s suggestions that domestic labor has been devalued, to the extent that it is viewed as the workplace of economically poor female immigrants. Furthermore, we shall examine the authors’ solutions to this societal narrative and how such economic disparity and the devaluing of domestic labor may be resolved.

Both texts trace the creation of an immigrant work force to economic differences amongst countries. The disparity in economic earnings between America and the Third World leads workers to search for employment in the U.S., often leaving their families behind as a result. The immigrants’ aim here is primarily altruistic: To provide a better living for their family at home, as Hochschild explains, “Third World Mothers…work abroad for long periods of time because they cannot make ends meet at home.” (116) Hochschild explains this phenomenon as a “care drain” (117) as opposed to a “brain drain”: it designates the “importation of care and love from poor countries to rich ones” (117), in the form of “maids and nannies or as day-care and nursing-home aides.” (117) This trend is certainly symptomatic of a growing economic disparity, as Hochschild notes that that economic differences between the “north and south”, referring to the U.S. and Mexico have increased. (117) Accordingly, many women have sought care work jobs in America to account for this economic situation. Furthermore, the increase in immigrant care workers is indicative of a certain societal re-evaluation occurring in American society regarding the importance of care workers and domestic work in general. The essential outsourcing of these jobs suggest that these jobs are no longer thought to be important to society, and subsequently it is low-paid immigrant workers that assume these roles.

Mitchell also identifies the economic situation as one of the primary reasons for this trend. Contemporary workers “are pressured by new technology, their own desires for consumer goods, national anxieties over global competition and exhortations from employers and co-workers to work overtime.” (Mitchell, 5) Insofar as these concerns take priority over domestic life, this is therefore indicative of a certain hierarchy of values at work in society, in which a general economic stability is conferred a higher importance than domestic work. Moreover, such domestic work, as Mitchell points out, is not even viewed as “work”: “Paid domestic work is distinctive not in being the worst job of all but in being regarded as something other than employment.” (13) Thus, the societal trend is to not even view the domestic employee, such as a maid or a nanny, as a worker. According to Mitchell, society therefore devalues domestic work on two levels: firstly, there is a priority given to the economic sphere over the domestic sphere; and secondly, there is a general disregard of the hard work that actually constitutes domestic labor.

Hochschild takes a similar approach to this devaluation, however, through an emphasis on the economics of globalization. This devaluation is consistent with a form of imperialism, in which the domestic worker is essentially a resource to be exploited, as in colonial practice. The care drain “harks back to imperialism in its most literal form: the nineteenth-century extraction of gold, ivory, and rubber from the Third World.” (26) This entails a certain commodification of domestic labour and care work, and thus devalues it, rendering it a mere resource comparable to raw material.

Both authors nevertheless propose various means in which to overcome the situation. Hochschild points out that a possible solution would be to focus on using the global-economic apparatus to develop Third World countries, thus eliminating the necessity for care-workers to leave their home country in order to provide economically for their families. However, she notes that studies demonstrate that increases in development do not tend to curb migration: this solution, while possible, remains perhaps too idealistic. Accordingly, Hochschild suggests what may be termed an immanent solution: she wishes to increase the societal conception of the value of care-work, reversing its devaluation in society. This can also be accomplished economically, by “rais[ing] the value of caring work itself, so that whoever does it gets more rewards for it.” (28) Moreover, a social solution that could supplement this economic approach is the involvement of fathers in the care work experience. (Hochschild, 29) This would therefore de-feminize the care work experience: by making it oblivious to gender differences, care work would become commonplace to all segments of society and therefore, central to society.

Mitchell also encourages a socio-economical solution, insofar as the problems of the devaluation of domestic work are the product of a complicated network of social narratives and economic apparatuses: “paid domestic work is governed by the parallel and interacting networks of women of different classes, ethnicities, and citizenship statuses….While employer and employee individually negotiate the job, their tactics are informed by their respective social networks.” (28) It is therefore through a deconstructive reading of these social networks and a thorough examination of how they inform the general American devaluation of domestic labor that suggests a possible break from this phenomenon. The realization that this phenomenon is a product of such complicated networks and not the product of some mystified individual choice will force society to reassess its relation to domestic work.

Both authors thus identify some of the complex factors that have devalued domestic work in contemporary American society. Economic and social narratives related to financial and racial inequality have rendered domestic work similar to a certain form of segregation. It is by re-evaluating the current situation of domestic labor, bringing out its primary causes, and making a decisive break with these causes that provides a possible rehabilitation of this crucial segment of society.