CONDICIONES GENERALES DEL CONTRATO

It is getting more and more normal and accepted in Norway, at least in my circle of friends. You need to hire help in order to have quality time at home … (Quoted in Seierstad and Kirton, 2015:399)

‘It is part of the whole Stockholm package,’ one woman explained. ‘Work a lot, commute, hire under-the-table cleaning help’. (Quoted in Bowman and Cole, 2009:168)

An association has been noted between middle-class women’s presence in the paid workforce (alongside increasing social inequalities) and the demand for paid domestic work across Western societies, regardless of their commitment to

gender equality (Calleman, 2011; Cox, 2006; Gregson and Lowe, 1994a; Lyonette and Crompton, 2015; Lutz, 2011; Seierstad and Kirton, 2015; Swan, 2012; van Walsum, 2011). The modern work ethic endorses the dominant twentieth-century male model of work and entrenches men’s gendered proclivity to avoid

housework (Cox, 2006). In other words, White middle-class women’s liberation is happening at the cost of continued oppression of their working-class/migrant counterparts, whose day is spent doing her and her housework (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2003; Gregson and Lowe, 1994a; Lutz, 2011; Rollins, 1985; Romero, 2002). Paid domestic work therefore is in ‘fundamental opposition to a feminism that goes beyond a liberal agenda of equal opportunity for women to seek an end to all forms of institutionalized inequality’ (Ostrander, 1987:52).

This theorisation is compelling, but it is underpinned by some

assumptions. Delap (2011a,b) showed how it overlooks post-war middle-class housewives’ ‘needs-based’ invisibilised dependence on charwomen. The same situation also occurs between men. For instance, contemporary British White middle-class men outsource their housework (e.g. gardening and house- maintenance) to Polish domestic handymen to gain parenting or leisure time, time which the handymen then lose out in their turn (Kilkey et al., 2013). In other countries, the ‘culture of servitude’ persists in an obvious way (e.g. India: Ray and Qayum, 2009/2010; Brazil: de Santana Pinho and Silva, 2010).

44 the Western heterosexual nuclear family as the ‘norm’ (Eichler and Albanese, 2007; VanEvery, 1997; e.g. see Backett, 1982; Bittman and Pixley, 1997; Gatrell, 2004; Oakley, 1974/1985), much paid housework research assumes that today, the dual-career heterosexual nuclear household is more likely to ‘need’ this service:

This study is limited to working women [in dual-earner heterosexual

households], because decisions on substituting domestic work are primarily theirs … because non-working women do not face time constraints from their market work. (Tijdens et al., 2003:5)

Yet all kinds of Western households outsource housework, including single-

adult/parents and (retired) older people (see Chapters 2 and 3); these households might also belong to lower-income groups (Triandafyllidou and Marchetti, 2015; see also Hyland, 2017).33 _{Egalitarian couples might outsource cleaning to gain}

‘leisure’ time (Gregson and Lowe, 1994a). These contradictions raise two questions:

 Do time constraints related to work commitments qualify as a valid ‘need’?  Does outsourcing improve relationship quality by avoiding confrontations over

housework (Anderson, 2000; de Santana Pinho and Silva, 2010; Ehrenreich, 2002/2010; Groves and Lui, 2012)?

Work–life balance policies – in liberal market or welfare states – do not encourage greater gender parity in household labour as they side-step work commitment (Collins, 2007). Would better-informed policies make a difference? Or is it the internalised unwillingness to do manual work that makes the middle-class woman (Delap, 2011a,b) feel ‘guilty’ when outsourcing her (and his) domestic work? As she wrestles with her egalitarian aspirations, she is embarrassed to acknowledge her help, sometimes framing herself as a ‘no-obligations’ consumer, who ‘struggles’ to provide a clear job description (Flanagan, 2004, n.p.; also Cox, 2006; Jones, 2004; Williams, 2012). Is domestic outsourcing-as-consumption inherently

irresponsible? Not necessarily – in many areas householders separate rubbish for recycling. Is it only status-enhancing? It might be, but outsourcing cooking, gardening and household maintenance can also be about status enhancement of the middle-class man. Moreover, the inter(net)-connected twenty-first century

45 has become the age of ‘the outsourced self’: today, a range of personal services are sold and bought (both mainly by women) in a market that incorporates moral economies (Hochschild, 2012). People might justify outsourcing one thing by not outsourcing another, or, to ensure private life is still personal, tell white lies, such as claiming to have cooked a ready-meal (Hochschild, 2012). Even if a middle-class woman considers it inappropriate to hire her services, she may still be using other personal services or things made by exploited workers in

in/visible public worksites.

Evidence for an association between outsourcing domestic work and reduced relationship conflict is weak (see Chapter 3). Furthermore, she may wield power in her workplace but become powerless in front of her mother-in-law (Lan, 2006) or still face domestic violence (Freeman, 2013). She also has to

manage her, and relationships may become fractious due to clashes over quality of work or childcare strategies (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001), or because of unclear boundaries (Orr, 2013). Asking an employee to dress down has been interpreted as her power over her (Rollins, 1985), but often she feels threatened by her

sexuality (Anderson, 2007; Lan, 2006). In India, her propensity for taking time off unexpectedly is a constant source of anxiety for her (Ray and Qayum,

2009/2010; Singh, 2007). Indeed, some workers are acutely aware of their employers’ dependency on them and might use this knowledge in negotiations (Saldaña-Tejeda, 2015).

In sum, outsourcing domestic work might release time to spend in career- and status-building activities. But these opportunities are not necessarily

associated with greater freedoms for her. Assuming such a correlation reduces women’s liberation simply to freedom from housework. Feminist unease about outsourcing domestic cleaning, however, is also based on the premise that cleaning is the lowliest of work (Anderson, 2000; Gregson and Lowe, 1994a).