Housewifeization
Housewifeization is a term used in feminist Marxist social criticism that was mainly coined by Maria Mies in the late 1970s . It describes the devaluation of domestic work, mostly carried out by women, in the capitalist system .
Origin of the term
The concept of housewifeization was coined in 1979 by Maria Mies as part of her research on lace crocheters in South India, that is, during her preoccupation with the “women's question” in developing countries . Mies found that these women were not only responsible for housework , but also worked productively for the top industry in home work . Their wages were extremely low, because they only counted as an additional income to that of a male breadwinner.
Definition of terms
In the critical examination of the gender division of labor that has been going on since the mid-1970s , it was found that housework
- according to the opinion at the time, it is not done for a wage, but "for love",
- the cheapest form of labor reproduction is and
- represents a blind spot in Marx's economy .
The so-called “Bielefeld Group” around Mies regards housework as the basis of capitalism, in contrast to Karl Marx , who sees wage labor as the basis. Mies speaks of the structural devaluation of female work under capitalism and of “housewifeized working conditions”.
Housewifeisation should express that women in patriarchal societies are generally and automatically viewed and treated as housewives , whereby the housework performed is not recognized as productive and declared as non-work.
In addition, housewifeisation implies that female wage labor is paid less than male labor because it is also regarded as non-rewarding “housewife activity”. Housewifeisation is seen as the main cause of the gender wage gap between men and women that still exists in Germany today.
Causes of housewifeization
urbanization
One of the causes of housewifeisation is urbanization , which Mies was able to observe in developing countries and which has already advanced in industrialized societies. In rural areas, the work necessary for food and livelihood is distributed throughout the family: women mostly work in the fields, prepare fuel or water and prepare the agricultural products for sale, while men often sell the products. Many of the tasks women have to do are lost when they move to a city; the men, on the other hand, can keep parts of their duties. This leads to a partial loss of function for women, often reinforced by patriarcho-religious (e.g. Islamic) traditions. If the women stay in the countryside while the men move into the city, this is called the feminization of agriculture .
Rise of the bourgeoisie
Another cause of housewifeisation is the separation of household and business, which took place in European handicrafts in the 18th and 19th centuries. The emancipation of bourgeois men was accompanied by a process of domestication of bourgeois women.
Colonization
According to Mies, housewifeization is an essential consequence of colonization . Colonialism enabled the development of productive power and high economic growth, so that entrepreneurs could pay their workers wages that were so high that they could support an inactive housewife and children. Before that was only possible in the bourgeoisie.
Consequences of housewifeization
- Due to their productive labor that is often not needed in the capitalist system, women are only reduced to reproductive tasks (having children, looking after them, bringing up) and doing the housework that all family members have to do. Due to the breakup of the extended family into a nuclear family , which occurred at the same time as urbanization and industrialization, old and physically weak family members are no longer responsible for these tasks and the housewives have to take them over completely. Through the role of the man as the woman's “breadwinner”, he also becomes her political representative.
- According to Claudia von Werlhof, among other things, the lower wages of working women lead to the tendency of companies to dismantle protected wages in favor of deregulated, unprotected, flexible, housewifeised working conditions. Features of housework, such as being available at all times, low or no wages (voluntary work), no protection of employment relationships, isolation and no trade union interest representation, are reflected in these new employment relationships. It is irrelevant whether a man or a woman enters into this relationship.
- According to Maria Mies, the tendency towards housewifeization is intensified, since international capital invests primarily in low-wage countries, where a high percentage of the workforce are unmarried young women who are employed because of their housewife qualifications (e.g. in the clothing industry). Declaring these employees to be housewives justifies the payment of low wages and dismissal after marriage to circumvent maternity and dismissal protection.
Consequence of this approach
The political consequence that part of the women's movement drew from Mies' analysis was the demand that housework be paid.
See also
literature
- Maria Mies : Lace Makers of Narsapur. Indian Housewives Produce for the World Market. Zed Books, London 1982, ISBN 0-86232-032-1 .
- Maria Mies , V. Bennholdt-Thomsen , C. von Werlhof: Women, the last colony. To housewifeize work. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-499-12239-1 .
- Frigga Haug : housewifeization. In: Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism . Vol. 5, Argument-Verlag, Hamburg, 2001, Sp. 1209-1215.
- Angélique Janssens: The male breadwinner. On the story of a symbolic social figure. In: Yearbook for research on the history of the labor movement . Issue I / 2002.
Web links
- Andrea Baier / Christa Müller: The Bielefeld subsistence approach
- Manuele Rottensteiner: The position of women in the third world and women in industrial nations
- Petra Höfels: All women are housewives - everywhere