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Paid Domestic Work’ Be Reconciled with Feminism?

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Paid Domestic Work’ Be Reconciled with Feminism? The problem that has a name: can ‘paid domestic work’ be reconciled with feminism? Lotika Singha PhD University of York Women’s Studies February 2017 Abstract Paid domestic work endures – with its oldest roots grounded in slavery and servitude, and newer ones in contemporary exploitative capitalism. Feminists the world over have analysed its occupational relations in depth to show how they reproduce race, class and gender inequalities, with many domestic workers experiencing inhumane treatment. But feminists also use domestic help. Should such feminists and paid domestic work be condemned, or can it be reconciled with the overarching feminist goals of equality and liberation that encompass all dimensions of discrimination? My thesis approaches this question through an interrogation of outsourced domestic cleaning in the UK and India. The primary data include 91 semi-structured interviews with White and Indian women working as cleaning service-providers and White and Indian female academics with an interest in feminism/gender and who were outsourcing domestic cleaning (or had outsourced previously), in the UK and India, respectively. My analytical approach, rooted in my particular varifocal diasporic gaze, draws on Mary Douglas’s anthropology-based cultural theory, which she used to show how comparative analysis enhances sociological understandings of the workings of the West’s own institutions and culture. My cross-cultural analysis thus takes into account similarities and differences between and within the four groups of participating women, as well as silences in the data. My findings reveal that in the modern urban context, outsourced domestic cleaning can be done as work (i.e. using mental and manual skills and effort and performed under decent, democratic work conditions) or as labour (requiring mainly manual labour, accompanied by exertion of ‘natural’ emotional/affective labour and performed in undemocratic conditions). The issue at stake for feminism(s) is not just some women doing the demeaning work of other women but the classed evolution of the very meanings of work in contemporary societies. 2 List of contents Abstract ...................................................................................................... 2 List of tables ............................................................................................... 7 List of figures .............................................................................................. 8 Acknowledgements ................................................................................... 10 Declaration ............................................................................................... 11 Introduction ............................................................................................. 12 Chapter 1 Feminist approaches to paid domestic work: a critique........... 15 Feminist concerns with paid domestic work ................................................... 18 The social meanings of ‘work’ ......................................................................... 24 Western feminist theorisation of housework .................................................. 27 Historical considerations in paid domestic work ............................................ 30 Methodological issues in feminist approaches to paid domestic work ............. 37 Biases in research ...................................................................................... 38 Analytical frameworks applied to paid domestic work ................................. 40 Contradictions and tensions in academic understandings of paid domestic work .............................................................................................................. 43 Contemporary Western middle-class women’s outsourcing of domestic work ................................................................................................................... 43 Domestic work as dirty work ...................................................................... 45 Domestic work, class and race/ethnicity .................................................... 46 ‘Work like no other, work like any other’ (ILO, 2010) .................................. 52 The professionalisation and regulation of domestic work ............................ 61 Meanings of paid domestic work ................................................................. 69 The research questions .................................................................................. 72 Chapter 2 Behind the words .................................................................... 74 The ‘I’ in this research ................................................................................... 74 An invitation to speak: unpacking the research design .................................. 75 Grappling with power in multi-site research .................................................. 81 Producing situated knowledge ....................................................................... 92 The respondents ............................................................................................ 97 The service-users ........................................................................................ 98 The service-providers ................................................................................ 105 3 Concluding remarks .................................................................................... 114 Chapter 3 The politics of outsourcing cleaning in (middle-class) households .............................................................................................. 115 Outsourcing cleaning: a matter of affluent symbolism, need or choice ......... 117 Outsourcing cleaning as a solution for gender inequities and relationship conflict......................................................................................................... 123 Sharing/division of housework and cleaning in particular ........................ 123 Outsourced cleaning as a panacea for conflicts over housework ............... 131 Time saved by outsourcing cleaning and middle-class women’s career progression .................................................................................................. 134 Concluding remarks .................................................................................... 142 Chapter 4 The imperfect contours of paid domestic work as dirty work 144 Cleaning: drudgery or dirty work ................................................................. 146 How often should a house be cleaned? ........................................................ 148 Dealing with physical dirt or waste .............................................................. 154 The limitations of theorising paid domestic work as dirty work .................... 168 Chapter 5 Domestic cleaning: work or labour? ..................................... 172 Cleaning fairies versus kichh-kichh .............................................................. 176 The discontinuities between unpaid and paid-for house-cleaning ................ 179 Cleaning as work versus labour ................................................................... 188 Concluding remarks .................................................................................... 204 Chapter 6 Meanings of domestic cleaning as work and as labour .......... 206 Experiences of domestic cleaning as work and labour .................................. 210 ‘It’s the same with any job really, isn’t it?’ (Yvonne) ................................... 210 Possibilities in cleaning work in the UK …………………………………….. 213 The ‘managed’ worker versus ‘self-directed’ worker ……………………... 215 A bit of cleanng on the side ………………………………………………….... 226 ‘We are just doing it out of majboori’ (Anika) ............................................. 227 Possibilities in cleaning work in India ……………………………………... 232 Employment status of the service-providers ………………………………. 233 Isolation and safety considerations .............................................................. 235 Physicality ................................................................................................... 236 Cleaning service-providers and the ‘double shift’ ......................................... 239 4 Selfhood and doing domestic cleaning as paid work: empowerment as ‘process’ (Kabeer, 2001) ............................................................................................. 240 Material injustices in outsourced house-cleaning as work and labour .......... 248 Concluding remarks .................................................................................... 256 Chapter 7 Cultural injustices in the occupational relations of domestic cleaning as work and as labour ............................................................... 258 ‘ultimately you’re there to do a job’ (Zoe) ...................................................... 261 The ‘hidden’ cultural injustices in outsourced cleaning ................................ 267 Cultural injustices in outsourced cleaning and wider occupational hierarchies .................................................................................................................... 273 Cleaning service-providers’ struggle against cultural injustices ................... 275 Addressing material injustices in outsourced cleaning through their intersections with cultural injustices ........................................................... 285 Concluding remarks ...................................................................................
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