most of the ladies do their own work at home, so they know how to do it. (Sarika)
when you’re doing housework you can sit down, have a brew, watch telly for a minute and think, ‘Oh I’ll do that in minute’. When you’re doing a clean, you’ve got two hours to get a whole house done. … So I think you don’t realise how much different it is to doing it in your own house, cause you don’t … ‘Oh! I’ll just sit down and watch this, just a minute!’ (Tamsin) To impress upon me that they were conscientious workers, some service- providers said they cleaned customers’ houses like their own.
I don’t think most cleaners clean … my mum’s cleaner never seems to bother with things like that, or if you open the door, there’s always a triangle behind the doors. I think most of my clients would agree that I clean properly … I
132 From this point I use kichh-kichh in both cultural contexts. ‘[U]niversalistic
pretensions of Western social science’ can be addressed by ‘cultural borrowing’ to allow development of a more inclusive global sociology (Qi, 2011:292), and the same can be argued for feminism(s).
133 The ‘cultural’ difference in how feedback is (or is not) given needs to be understood in
terms of wider cultural norms around social interactions (including politeness and courtesy), which vary between world regions and are also classed and gendered (Mills, 2004). Still, British workers’ struggles in the first half of the twentieth century clearly levelled the social playground between classes to a significant extent, and currently, recognition of workers’ rights also likely encourages people to treat others with greater respect. In this situation, however, service-users might struggle with how to
communicate with regards to what is considered poor work or work relationships. White lies can be used to end an unsatisfactory arrangement, and frustration vented in online discussion forums. In India, regional variations in social norms and language use, dialects and accents, also means people might appear to sound more harsh or rude in some regions than others to someone from another culture (see Mills, 2004). Yet again however, struggles similar to those in Britain have been part of Indian history and
continue to happen, including by domestic worker unions and cooperatives (e.g. see Bali, 2016) and have led to changes such as shifts in domestic workers being referred to as staff rather than servants, and service-users’ children addressing these workers in familial respectful terms such as didi rather than by name.
180 wipe down everything … my approach to it is that I clean as if it’s my own house. (Evie)
I could have considered other work had I been educated … That’s why I could only do housework … I don’t think there is anything wrong with it, I put my heart and soul into anything I do, I never think it is somebody else’s work. I work like I would in my own home. (Pallavi)
But others stressed the same point saying their own home was not cleaned in the same way.
when I’m at my sister’s, I’m always thinking, ‘Have I done it well enough?’ … I clean thoroughly, I make stuff look nice, I always spend more than two hours there ... So I think when I’m cleaning for somebody else … it’s like I’m looking at it from the outside and thinking: Is that okay? Have I done that? I clean her kitchen floor every week. My kitchen floor does not get cleaned every week. … So, you know, being more thorough, being more aware of … that there is an external observer to my work, whereas here I’m the observer! (Carrie)
There is no difference as such, but this is there that their work is done to a somewhat better standard. I do my work a little differently. They ask for a very high standard of cleaning. We also do cleaning in our own home, but in our own way … So our [paid] work is to clean spotlessly. There should not be even a speck of dirt. (Chetna)
To explain these apparent contradictions I unpack the construction of cleaning by my respondents in terms of site of work, the time-bind, the work that needs to be done and its outcomes. Researchers agree that separation of the worker’s home and workplace was key for the transformation of domestic work from
servitude to service (Dill, 1994; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001; Salzinger, 1991). Glenn noted live-out domestic work was more liberating for Japanese-American women than home-based or family-business work because it was ‘employment outside the family’ (1981:362). Yet theories of paid housework as a matter ‘between women’ often refer to the site of work only in terms of the service-user’s home rather than the worker’s workplace (e.g. see Lutz, 2011).
Some live-out cleaning service-providers in both countries said their workplace was not in their private sphere; they went out to work (Glenn, 1981). The first visit to a service-user’s house could be daunting, and the conditions
181 could made the work different. For instance, Nora thought her paid work was similar to her housework. But she did housework as part of ‘doing family’ (Morgan, 2011), while she did paid-for cleaning as a provider of a paid service. These service-providers’ views problematise feminist arguments that the service- user’s home cannot be considered a ‘workplace’ (see Chapter 1), a point that is key for enabling legal enforcement of domestic workers’ rights (Neetha and Palriwala, 2011; Vasanthi, 2011; also ILO, 2010, 2016; Schwartz, 2014).
Whereas unpaid cleaning may or may not be subject to routines, paid-for house-cleaning is expected to occur at regular times at regular intervals. It also consumes a tangible amount of time (see also Bailly et al., 2013; Glenn, 1986). Like the popular misconception that housework just ‘happens’, the withering feminist critique that women indulge in ‘elaborating housework tasks so they take up endlessly increasing amounts of time’ (Oakley, 1974/1985:104; Friedan, 1963), does not help service-providers in their negotiations with potential service- users about time required for cleaning.
you often find, particularly with mothers who are returning to work after maternity leave … they kind of underestimate … how much time they physically spend in running a home. … They’d go, ‘Oh! a couple of hours twice a week’ and I’d look at them and go, ‘Really? Right, keep a log – even if you’re just wiping down the draining board and it took you two minutes, you write that down. Do that for a week … You will be horrified, because putting out the recycling, sweeping the kitchen floor, wiping down the baby’s
highchair, you think it takes ten seconds? It doesn’t – it takes five minutes. You do that and then get back to me and tell me realistically, how much time you think I need’ … women, particularly, don’t realise how much time they spend on domestic tasks. (Nicola)
When Navita said her service-provider could not ‘multi-task’, I thought she was asking her to do a lot in little time:
She is not able to multi-task. And I realised that one day when my friend was visiting and I said do this, and after five minutes I said can you do this and after another five minutes I said can you do this? [My friend] said you’re giving her too many things to do, she’s only able to do one thing at a time. In the numerous internet discussion threads on the reasonableness of service- providers’ quotes, many respondents blithely noted it was ‘just about’ the
182 number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Some measured responses said it also depended on the tasks to be done. Very few (often service-providers themselves) pointed out that the time required also depended on the area, design and state of the house (also Rafkin, 1998). Nor is this issue simply a domestic matter
concerning women. Time more generally is a multi-valent category: broadly separable into ‘clock’-time and social-time, several ‘times’ pass simultaneously (Adams, 1995:99). People’s differential valuation of calls on their time(s) and consequently time(s) itself is grounded in modern malestream work–everyday dualism.134 Since housework is less valued, the time spent on unpaid housework
is imagined to be less than the actual time required (Adams, 1995). Clock-time has ‘power’ (Adams, 1995:99), so resistance to service-providers’ quotes is part of potential customers’ exertion of power. Also, in the present capitalist context, when cleaning is outsourced, service-users seek to extract maximum work for the minimum fee (Romero, 2002; Ray and Qayum, 2009/2010). But the equation of money, efficiency (pace of work) and profit that is used to translate paid work into clock-time (Adams, 1995) simplifies the real-life myriad, complex relations between work and time, as clearly evident in the different internet forum responses.
Some UK service-providers negotiated the time-bind by doing an initial ‘deep’ clean, and charging separately for it, followed by regular ‘maintenance’ cleans done in less time. Others used the ‘creep and go’ method – doing one room thoroughly every time in rotation with light cleaning of other rooms. Oven
cleaning can be a major job, and increasingly in the UK this work is offered as an ‘extra’ – for some respondents this happened with experience. Some people in both countries kept a watch on clock-time (kichh-kichh), requesting odd jobs to ‘fill’ spare time or chastising the service-provider who left early. Others gradually increased the work expected more generally – she might as well wash (more and more) dishes while cleaning the sink in the same time. Astute service-providers with sufficient work can stop working for such clients. However, like the internet respondents, my interviews also revealed that not everyone is insensitive about time.
134 Which, unfortunately, some women’s liberation has bolstered rather than challenged
183 No the thing is, if she going to give you an hour, in the hour she has to clean up the entire house, obviously she’s not going to clean it as if it’s her own house … she may avoid the upstairs, or she won’t err, mop the stairs or where the bathroom is concerned, she might just kind of mop the floor. They’re not going to spend time you know, cleaning the grout or you know, cleaning behind the tap. (Shobha)
I’ve got one I go twice a week, on a Monday and a Friday. Both times they want the kitchen doing and on Mondays its upstairs and Fridays its
downstairs. … she doesn’t overload it, so it can be done at a nice pace, where you can do a thorough job and don’t have to rush to fit it all in. (Charlotte) This analysis shows why time-management is crucial for paid-for cleaning but optional in the unpaid situation (see Tamsin’s quote at the start of this section).
Variations in the materiality of domestic spaces and domestic work itself are not just a historical matter; regional, cultural and class differences affect workers’ ‘competencies’ (Bujra, 2000; Jackson, 1992). All the UK service-
providers lived in houses whose basic design was similar to their service-users’ houses, although they might have had cheaper carpets and linoleum. Many Indian service-providers’ families, however, slept and cooked in a single room dwarfed by a bed (some also bathed and entertained visitors there). The slum tenements had mud walls and floors, a few shelves but often no windows. Very few respondents had a kitchenette with worktops; the rest cooked squatting on the floor. Built tenements often had rough cement floors and surfaces, whereas service-users’ houses could have marble floors and granite kitchen surfaces. Clearly, the Indian service-providers cannot be assumed to ‘know’ cleaning of windows, worktops, cookers, or using cleaning products they could not afford to buy for themselves. Some house-cleaning practices they knew, for example applying cow-dung to the floor (Kothari, 1997), were irrelevant when cleaning a contemporary urban house. Indeed, many learned what they now knew when they started working (see also Lutz, 2011:56).
Yes, my employer taught me, holding my hand. Sweep like this, mop like this, I mean like this, all the work. So this is how I learnt [how to do it] after I came to this city. (Urvashi)
The woman who was already working in that house teaches you how to do it: you need to sweep like this, mop like this, wash the clothes like this, do this
184 like that. She tells you whether the verandahs have to be cleaned, what has to be cleaned, how to clean the photographs, she instructs in all these
things. [Lotika: Is there a lot of difference between the houses?] Yes there is a difference. Also, in one’s own house, people do what they want to do. In others’ houses you worry about it – what if something gets left? What if am I blamed for something [like breakage or missing valuables]? You might have to work under fear of something going wrong. (Brinda)
Pratibha had given up outsourcing partly because ‘[m]ost maids come as raw hands and are to be painstakingly taught the nitty-gritty of efficient
housekeeping – before they are lured away by the neighbours! I had so many maids leaving at this stage [as] I had become well known for my “training
programmes”.’ Even UK service-providers talked about a learning curve. Yvonne had been subcontracting work to her friends. This arrangement had led to
customer complaints and she gradually realised not everyone cleans in the same way:
obviously with the level of cleaners that I’ve seen now that I’ve got – some of the girls are dead slow and compared to some of them, they’re really, d’you know they’re really good and everybody loves them … and they make sure that everything is done with an eye to detail. So it isn’t just as you can either clean or you can’t, there is a bit more to it, when you … know about it, when you’re looking for it. (Yvonne)
Singh (2007) notes domestic workers in Ranchi, India, often had to be taught the work, with service-users willing to pay more for a trained worker. Early Japanese migrant domestic workers also had to learn the American style of housework; many had never done housework or had maids themselves in Japan (Glenn, 1981:362). Male domestic workers mostly do not do housework in their own homes, because the unpaid work of cooking, cleaning and childcare has largely been carried out by women across classes and cultures (Bujra, 2000; Flather, 2013). A few single women said they did not doubt a man’s cleaning ability but expressed unease around male sexuality.135 The service-providers who
subcontracted work had been approached by men, but customers showed reluctance. It appears domestic cleaning as paid work in a modern context is
185 influenced not just by traditional views of ‘women’s work’ but also notions of the wider relations between men and women.
The starting point of paid-for cleaning varies: in the UK, sometimes the work started with tidying, and at other times it was just about ‘topping’ up an already tidy and clean house. Others have argued that service-users, particularly housewives, move the goalposts of their own unpaid cleaning when they
outsource by ‘imposing specific cleaning methods, and adding ritual cleaning’ because outsourced cleaning is as much about status reproduction (Romero, 2002:161; also Anderson, 2000, 2003). Indeed, people’s expectations of the outcomes of ‘cleaning’ are often higher when it is outsourced:
How will they be able to do all the work? If no-one helps them, they will cook themselves and eat. I mean, they will not relax as much as they are doing now. But will they do all this work all day? Like now, they will use three to four dishes, but if she is doing it herself, she will use only one dish. She will manage to do all the work with one dish. Like when I mop, she tells me to change the water in the bucket twice. But if she was doing it, she would do it with one bucketful. All of it. … I do it every day but she would do it every third day. (Gauri)
But is this always the case? On the one hand, from the business-minded British service-provider’s136 perspective, the ‘extra’ work could become added-value
work.
I think some people don’t clean to the standards that I do and you have to have a high standard in this job. Because ... even though you go into
somebody’s house and you know that they never clean their skirting boards, I would still do that. Because it’s about impressing people as well, it’s about, you know, they are, they can clean their house for free, [but] I want [the work], they are paying me to clean their house, it needs to be that little bit extra. … I clean my bath and sink out and I leave water there after I’ve done it, but in a client’s house I would wipe away all the watermarks on the
shower screens … even though they wouldn’t necessarily. [Then] they walk in and think ‘Wow’ Isn’t it lovely’, you know, and they like that and I get
complimented on that. (Jessica)
186 On the other hand, service-users may not always desire perfection. Naomi, for instance, stopped outsourcing cleaning to a friend because:
she was actually too good a cleaner! She was a meticulous cleaner. Actually what I needed was somebody to go around, do the kitchen and toilets and things like that. And tidy things away and do a bit of dusting. But she got very frustrated by the fact that ... our house is a very open house and there are always lots of kids in and out and it needs to be clean but not necessarily meticulously clean.
Beverley, who was compulsive about cleaning, said outsourcing cleaning to a woman who did not pay the same attention to detail helped her keep her obsession under control, she was ‘less worried about it’: her ‘mental health seems to be linked to having a cleaner’. Some Indian service-users also tolerated substandard work, often topping up paid work with unpaid work.
Now she has learnt, but sometimes I still feel that she is not doing it to my satisfaction so I need to tell her. But she is a good, responsible woman. She does it more or less, and if I explain this to her [once] I don’t have to explain again. But because I myself am a bit fastidious I feel … it’s all right. But on the whole she’s okay ... (Nandita)
That they don’t do, in any case they don’t do [housework as well as we do it ourselves]. You have to accept … isn’t it, that if it is not like this – you have to think, you have to rationalise it and then [you think] it’s okay, it’s okay. At times you lose temper also, it’s so very human, I cannot say that I do not get upset, and that happens. [And] at times I ignore it also, it’s a mix of things. (Geetanjali).
As previously reported, many Indian service-users considered domestic workers unquestionably necessary, and it was more important to have a clean and honest service-provider (Ray and Qayum, 2009/2010; Dickey, 2000b; Mattila, 2011; see also Chapters 1 and 3). Tolerance is not absolute, however, as Geetanjali said, and kichh-kichh around unsatisfactory work is common (Ray and Qayum, 2009/2010; Verma and Larson, 2001). But is kichh-kichh just about a struggle for control over the work between the privileged middle-class housewife and her substitute (Romero, 2002)? Certainly, service-providers overwhelmingly prefer customers who do not indulge in kichh-kichh. At the same time, many service-