Domestic Technology Liberator or Enslaver
by Ursula Huws
Resume by ISIS
The purpose of this article is to examine some of the traditional assumptions about technology in the home, and see how they stand up to actual experience, to explore some of the contradictions in housewives' situations, and look at the implications for socialist feminist strategies around new technology. Inevitably, this will be just a sketchy and tentative beginning but hopefully it can lead to more substantial work in the future.
Any investigation of the effects of new technology in the home has to start with the incontrovertible fact that the technology which has so far been introduced has failed to
liberate women from the role of houseworker and from the reality of many hours of unpaid household labour. Despite much liberal theorising about the 'symmetrical family' and changes in the boundaries between 'men's' and 'women's' work in many homes, housework is still seen as the woman's responsibility, and such research as has been done on hours of labour in the home suggests that, if anything, the amount of time spent by the average woman on housework is actually going up — from around 60 hours a week in the 1920s to over 70 in the '70s, and this during a half-century when there has been an unprecedented increase in the number and variety of 'labour-saving' appliances, household chemicals, convenience foods and so on. What can be the explanation for this phenomenon?
It appears that several different factors make a contribution to this state of affairs.
The first of these is ideological. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English have shown in much of their work the power of ideological forces in bringing about the 'manufacture of housework' as they call it. The education system, advertising, the advice of 'experts' in medicine and psychiatry have ail combined to persuade women whose grandmothers made do with an annual spring clean that every corner of their homes must be disinfected weekly or even daily, that clothes should be washed after each wearing and that children will suffer extreme deprivation if not given undivided, continual attention...
A second factor is a direct consequence of the privatisation of domestic life. Each housewife, isolated in her own home, duplicates the work of every other housewife, and requires her own individual washing machine, fridge, cooker, hoover and all the other items which make up a well-equipped home from lemon squeezers to chip pans, many of which are probably out of use 95% of the time. There is thus no economy of scale, which is often the main saving which automation brings. Getting out the food mixer, assembling the bits, dismantling it, washing it up and putting it away again takes as much time whether one is cooking for two or twenty, and the same applies to hundreds of other operations which all women carry out separately.
The third factor, less obvious but perhaps even more pervasive in its effects, results from applications of technology and science elsewhere in the economy. As areas of paid work are automated and 'rationalised' to maximise profits and efficiency and minimize labour costs, so more and more unpaid 'consumption work' (as it has been labelled by Batya Weinbaum and Amy Bridges) is foisted onto consumers - in other words onto women as housewives. Thus, since the beginning of this century, a whole new range of self service tasks has been added to the traditional responsibilities of the housewife... The housewife is now expected to transport herself to the nearest supermarket, find the goods she wants, take them down from the shelves, transport them to the checkout, wait, and transport them home - nearly all tasks which used
to be somebody's paid job... Many other examples could be quoted of this trend towards what Jonathan Gershuny has called a 'self-service economy'. What liberal economists like Gershuny fail to point out is that in a society in which unpaid work is equated with women's work, such self-service tasks will inevitably fall preponderantly on women, thus reaffirming the low value placed on women's labour in the wider economy, in a self-confirming circle, and perpetuating women's oppression in the home.
The roots of the fourth factor which contributed to extra housework lie in women's role as carer. She is expected to take responsibility for the health and safety of the entire
family in and around the home, more particularly that of children and aged or handicapped dependents... Perhaps the three most important 'advances' of the twentieth century — the internal combustion engine, the many-branched growth of the chemical industry, and electricity, are also the three greatest killers, as anyone who has had to keep a toddler safe will appreciate. Outdoors, the danger from traffic is a constant nightmare; indoors, poisonous chemicals are used for every thing from cleaning the lavatory to keeping mummy tranquillised, while sockets and trailing leads make every room potentially lethal. Safety advertisements on TV and in clinics emphasise, with guilt-provoking details, that it is mothers who are responsible when children are mutilated and killed, and it is actually a legal offence to leave a child alone. Childcare,
thus, has become a tense, fraught, 24-hour responsibility and again science and technology have added to housework with one hand, while seeming to lighten it with the other.
In any discussion of the disadvantages of the new technology or science there is a danger of appearing to glorify some pretechnological past golden age. That danger exists too in the discussion of housework. It is important to remember that it's always been hard and that technology has brought about advances for women in terms of reduced physical effort, more choice, freedom from some types of diseases etc. But we must always remember that it is contradictory. Just as contraceptive technology has given some freedom of choice to women about whether or not to have children although it hasn't brought our liberation from male domination of our bodies, and has created new health risks, so domestic technology has brought some advantages, while in no way bringing about our liberation from housework. In some ways, the effects of technology in the home parallel very closely the effects of technology in the factory, as analysed by Harry Braverman and his many followers.
The workers' skills and knowledge are appropriated, and incorporated in the design of the machines. Just as skilled craftspeople, such as lathe cutters, suddenly find themselves needing only to know which button to press on the computer controlled machine, so the housewife can now discard all her expert knowledge about, for instance, different methods of washing different types of fabrics, and need simply select the right programme on her automatic washing machine. Similarly, cooking may become a simple matter of following the instructions on the packet - the only skill required is literacy.
Dependence on the 'expert' is also increased. We no longer understands what things are made of and how they work. In the home, it leads to an increased helplessness and dependence on the part of the housewife. She does not know why the label on the aerosol say 'Caution, do not use near pets or foodstuffs; keep away from children' so she has no alternative but to slavishly follow the directions, abandoning any possibility of creative improvisation with the materials at hand. She also spends ever-increasing amounts of frustrating time waiting for the 'expert' repair man, gas fitter etc.
The effects of all this are very contradictory. On the one hand the fact that household tasks have become easier and less specialised means that anyone can do them. This opens up possibilities of men taking a larger share in housework and potentially liberating women. The mysteries once handed down from one woman to another are now common property, and do not command any respect. For older women in particular, this can lead simply to a feeling of dispensibility and interchangeability with other women which results not in greater liberation but in increased economic insecurity. This closely parallels the experience of older skilled industrial workers who feel themselves devalued and made redundant when their jobs become easier as a result of new technology.
There is another sense in which these developments adversely affect women economically. A fully-operating home these days requires a much bigger capital investment than it did in the past, and while most women 5«t little more than half men's wages, this can mean that a woman who decides to leave her man and set up on her own is plummeted into quite extreme deprivation, going as she does from the standard of living of a 11/2-income family to that of a 1/2-income one. As society is increasingly reorganised on the basis that every 'normal household is equipped with a telephone, fridge, TV, etc., surviving without these things becomes increasingly intolerable.
What are the implications of all this for socialist feminists? In our personal lives, many of us find live able solutions - we live collectively with other women or cheaply on our own, push men into doing their share of housework or find sufficiently well-paying jobs to buy our way out of the worst problems (though we often pay a price for this in perpetual exhaustion, or enforced childlessness). When it comes to formulating demands to benefit all women, things become more problematic.
Clearly, it is not enough to take on new technology just in the workplace. We must recognise that it affects every other area of our lives too, and find ways to resist its worst effects. Community organisation might provide part of the answer... We should definitely continue with campaigns for day-care facilities for children, the aged and the handicapped and for safer streets and play areas and better-designed housing. We must also, I believe, clarify what we mean by the socialisation of domestic labour. It is possible to imagine a society in which just about all the things now done by women in the home are automated or carried out as paid services without capitalism having been dislodged or women achieving liberation. We must start defining what sort of services we want and insist that they are brought in under our control
