Domestic Division Of Labour

The domestic division of labour is the sorting of household work to different people within said household (Trotz, lecture, Jan 10, 2018). The splitting of domestic work is done between a man and a woman, but it is not always the case. It is gendered as in most cases, the majority of domestic work is done by the women regardless of whether or not they have a waged job. Based on the data summarized by Seager (2009/2013), it shows that the amount of time women spend on completing domestic work is at least three times longer than men in both developing and developed countries. Furthermore, Emma (2017) agrees that women end up having a heavier domestic workload as they end up doing three quarters of the work that is required in the household. This

This results in the addition of a domestic worker, who is often from another country, into the household which sets off a care drain which drains away the care from one family to another (Hochschild, 2002). By hiring another person to complete the jobs in domestic labour, it creates more problems for the worker. As most of the domestic workers would also be caregivers, the job as a domestic worker has mainly been filled by women, who end up leaving their children and family by migrating to another country (Burn, 2010/2013). However, with their absence, their children also need someone to take care of them, which requires another caregiver and this cycle continues, which makes up this care drain (Hochschild, 2002). Many of the women who are hired for these jobs come from families that are in need of money, so they are willing to travel long distances (Hochschild, 2002). However, some of the women are also at risk because they can end up in positions of abuse as there are not many laws that protect them in some of the places they work at as a domestic worker (Burn, 2010/2013). The increasing requests for female domestic workers emphasizes on how domestic work is deeply gendered, and as a consequence, some women might be putting themselves in

Social reproduction is “The physical, mental and emotional (caring) labour involved in the everyday and intergenerational maintenance of life itself.” (Trotz, lecture, Jan 10, 2018). As social reproduction encompasses these different types of labour, it can end up enforcing what is seen to be “normal” even when it is not. An example is in the case of George and Maria, who instead of always having the woman be the housekeeper and taking care of children while the father goes out to find work, they occasionally switch roles between each other (Bourantani, 2017). The jobs that they find are usually part time jobs as well so that allows more room for both partners to share the task of childcare (Bourantani, 2017). By opening up to more part time jobs, it gives the couple more flexibility, so the domestic workload can become more even between the two. Furthermore, it challenges the concept of heteronormativity, as by queering social reproduction, it also challenges the roles men and women are normally assumed to take. Instead of having the man in the relationship be the permanent breadwinner and only focused on working, and having the woman always being the primary caregiver, by combining the two tasks together, it