The Politics of Housework - The Politics of Housework by...

The Politics of Housework
by Pat Mainardi (1970). A widely read article from a member of the NY Redstockings Group about the savage
inequalities in domestic family labor. by Pat Mainardi of Redstockings
(Editors Note: This article was originally published by Redstockings in 1970. Redstockings was an early
women's liberation group centered in New York and was responsible for a number of influential writings.)
Though women do not complain of the power of husbands, each complains of her own husband, or of the
husbands of her friends. It is the same in all other cases of servitude; at least in the commencement of the
emancipatory movement. The serfs did not at first complain of the power of the lords, but only of their tyranny.
-John Stuart Mill On the Subjection of Women
Liberated women-very different from Women's Liberation! The first signals all kinds of goodies, to warm the
hearts (not to mention other parts) of the most radical men. The other signals-HOUSEWORK. The first brings
sex without marriage, sex before marriage, cozy housekeeping arrangements ("I'm living with this chick") and
the self-content of knowing that you're not the kind of man who wants a doormat instead of a woman. That will
come later. After all, who wants that old commodity anymore, the Standard American Housewife, all husband,
home and kids? The New Commodity; the Liberated Woman, has sex a lot and has a Career, preferably
something that can be fitted in with the household chores-like dancing, pottery, or painting.
On the other hand is Women's Liberation-and housework. What? You say this is all trivial? Wonderful! That's
what I thought. It seemed perfectly reasonable. We both had careers, both had to work a couple of days a week
to earn enough to live on, so why shouldn't we share the housework? So I suggested it to my mate and he
agreed-most men are too hip to turn you down flat. You're right, he said. It's only fair. Then an interesting thing
happened. I can only explain it by stating that we women have been brainwashed more than even we can
imagine, Probably too many years of seeing television women in ecstasy over their shiny waxed floors or
breaking down over their dirty shirt collars. Men have no such conditioning. They recognize the essential fact
of housework right from the very beginning. Which is that it stinks.
Here's my list of dirty chores: buying groceries, carting them home and putting them away; cooking meals and
washing dishes and pots; doing the laundry digging out the place when things get out of control; washing
floors. The list could go on but the sheer necessities are bad enough. All of us have to do these things, or get
someone else to do them for us. The longer my husband contemplated these chores, the more repulsed he
became, and so proceeded the change from the normally sweet, considerate Dr. Jekyll into the crafty Mr. Hyde
who would stop at nothing to avoid the horrors of-housework. As he felt himself backed into a comer laden