The Second Shift
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The Second Shift Making Visible the Unseen Work of Home Clare Gallagher BA (Hons), PGCE, MFA, FHEA Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Ulster University Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2020 I confirm that the word count of this thesis is less than 100,000 words CONTENTS The Second Shift ................................................................................................................... 1 Making Visible the Unseen Work of Home ...................................................................... 1 CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................... 3 ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. 4 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY ..................................................... 9 CHAPTER 2: HOME ............................................................................................................. 39 CHAPTER 3: THE EVERYDAY AND PHOTOGRAPHY ................................................... 59 CHAPTER 4: TACTICS, AESTHETICS AND POLITICS ................................................. 83 ATTENTION & AESTHETICS ............................................................................................. 89 CHAPTER 5: HOUSEWORK AND MOTHERWORK ....................................................... 102 CHAPTER 6: DIRT, DISGUST AND DISORDER ............................................................. 138 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................... 160 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 168 LIST OF IMAGES ................................................................................................................. 192 APPENDIX 1: RELATED OUTPUTS .................................................................................. 193 APPENDIX 2: REVIEWS ..................................................................................................... 220 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the women who shared their experiences of the second shift, my supervisors at various stages Shirley MacWilliam, Dr Cherie Driver, Prof Paul Seawright and Dr Kaylynn Deveney, research staff Dr Justin Magee and Paul Brown, and my family and friends. To my mother - for her wisdom, childcare, and for blazing the trail. 3 The Second Shift: Making Visible the Unseen Work of Home Abstract ABSTRACT This doctoral research focuses on the second shift - the invisible work of home and childcare primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment. Hidden in plain sight and veiled by familiarity and insignificance, the second shift is largely absent from representations of home and family. Sociological studies on the second shift are numerous and considered in this thesis yet, given that the lack of visibility is perhaps the biggest problem, there is a paucity of visual art attempting to address it. I observe that the insistent distinction made between private and public masks both a comprehensive inequality and the excuse for failing to address it. Recognising that gendered differences extend beyond the individual to the structural creates space to press for change. I conducted fieldwork to forge connections and raise consciousness by recognising, hearing and seeing what women do, and how they feel, about the second shift; the personal is political. My art practice examines these ordinary, familiar experiences of home and the everyday. I use photography to observe what is overlooked in the habitual mode of daily life. The resulting artwork illuminates the details of quotidian practices of housework and family care, and a quiet anger at what is taken for granted. I conclude by considering art as a means of resistance, looking for what is omitted in representation, paying attention to what seems unworthy of noticing at all, and showing our ways of making do and getting by. The accompanying practice resulted in a body of photographs which was published in a photobook in 2019 and will be shown in a series of international exhibitions in 2020. This artwork aims to make the second shift and its attendant emotional affects visible and this representation is my contribution to knowledge. 4 The Second Shift: Making Visible the Unseen Work of Home Introduction INTRODUCTION ‘I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes – and six months later you have to start all over again.’1 My research focuses on The Second Shift2, the hidden shift of housework and childcare primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment. It is physical, mental and emotional labour which demands effort, skill and time but is unpaid, unaccounted for, unequally distributed and largely unrecognised. This experience of performing two work shifts daily, one during their ‘leisure’ hours, is that of the majority of working women. It also implies a hierarchy: that some people's time matters more than others. I probe the changed, potentially more fraught relationship with home that accompanies the transition to motherhood and is inclined to remain after the return to paid work outside the home. Hidden in plain sight and veiled by familiarity and insignificance, the second shift is largely absent from representations of home and family. This work is an attempt to recognise the complexity and value of this invisible work; it is also a call for resistance to the capitalist, patriarchal and aesthetic systems which ignore it. My art practice examines the ordinary, familiar experiences of home and the everyday. I use photography to help me observe what is so easily hidden in the habitual mode of daily life. Photography has, for me, a relationship with the real which facilitates a closer reading of the concealed significance of details, gestures, ways of doing, and in-between moments where nothing much seems to be happening. A readily-available medium, accessible to almost everyone and which crosses boundaries between art and life, photography is an apposite art form with which to research this most prosaic of subjects. As an artist I work slowly, using reading of theory and wider culture with reflective writing to feed my artistic practice. I tend to set out with a sense of the character for the research project but without any clear idea of what the finished body of work will consist. I have learned to trust that the iterative process of artmaking, theoretical engagement and reflection will produce a resonant and layered result. I began this PhD angry at the burden of the second shift, at its gendering and low value but mostly at its invisibility. 1 Joan Rivers cited in Hollis (2016) p88 2 The term was coined by Arlie Hochschild in her book The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home first published in 1989 by Viking Penguin 5 The Second Shift: Making Visible the Unseen Work of Home Introduction Sociological studies on the second shift are numerous and considered in this thesis yet, given that the lack of visibility is perhaps the biggest problem, there is a paucity of visual art3 attempting to address it. I look for ways of representing the work of women in the home and pushing back against gendered expectations which leave women responsible for the lion’s share of childcare and housework4. I consider art as potential means of resistance, by looking for what is omitted in representation, by paying attention to what seems unworthy of noticing at all, and by seeking out and showing our ways of making do and getting by. The practice of this PhD aims to make the second shift and its attendant emotional affect visible and this representation is my contribution to knowledge. This thesis gathers together cultural and theoretical work on the three main areas underpinning the second shift: the home, the everyday and women’s work. I argue that the second shift is gendered labour and that this is a structural problem produced by biased and discriminatory systems which are materially rather than ideologically motivated. They oppress women in order to exploit their reproductive, sexual, domestic and care labour. Stephen Johnstone describes Annette Messager’s text pieces from the 1970s as shining ‘an ambiguous half-light on the hidden language that underpins the most quotidian of activities, those of washing the dishes, opening the post’5. It is my intention to create a body of images that does this. This takes the form of depicting elements of the claustrophobia and conflict hidden within the tranquil haven of home, the signs of toil and activity which hint at the labour of the second shift, and using dirt, disgust and disorder to jolt the visual vocabulary of home out of its reliance on clichés of softness, comfort and ease. In Chapter 1 I explain my background as an artist and how my evolving practice brought me to investigate the second shift. I outline the design of the methodology, taking a feminist approach to questions of knowledge and methods of asking them. The methodology was designed to look for and capture detail in the midst of the daily work of home, both my own and others’, operating