Maid to Order

In the essay "Maid to Order" barbara Ehrenreich provided many examples and opinions that I had never even thought about until reading her essay. Being a maid herself, she can provide factual information. I thought that the idea of cleaning around the house as a reflection of a relationship was interesting. However, I do not think that the male in the relationship leaves dishes out for his female counterpart to clean as a way to show authority; I think that it has a lot to do with laziness and forgetfulness.  The maid service that claimed to "save marriages was a funny source, I thought. Ehrenreich introduced cleaning services later in the essay. I noticed that wages for maids of the service were paid very poorly. On page 65, I did not understand how the services partially paid the maids with public money. I never thought about how cleaning services never actually clean, they just provide the image of being clean. After reading this, I'm not sure that I will ever hire a maid service. I like my home clean!

Response

Who would have thought something that seems as simple as housecleaning could cause such disruption in the lives of so many?  Growing up the only problems I saw with it was debating with my parents over who should have to do what, my brother or me.  The housework is actually fairly evenly split between my parents and if there was someone doing more work it would probably be my father.  I never saw a power dominance either way because it all seemed pretty fair.  "Maid to Order" by Barbara Ehrenreich opened my eyes to the problems caused by homeowners paying, or often times not paying, others to do the domestic work for them.

Its interesting once one realizes that by teaching younger generations that it is ok to hire someone else to clean will only increase the "domestically incompetent," and encourage the use of money to pay for any other tasks needed.  Housework seems like only a small, even non-existent, problem in the day to day life of Americans, however Ehrenreich has shown that it is just a fraction of the whole problem of people relying on others to clean up their messes, and not just in the cleaning sense.  It seems like the world would be a much better place if everyone just cleaned up after him or herself or took care of what ever he or she caused.

Response to "Maid to Order"

In her essay “Maid to Order: The politics of other women’s work,” Barbara Ehrenreich undescores the “gender oppression” (60) that is often yielded as a consequence of housework. She accordingly comments on the equalizing force of housekeeping, in the sense that all women (excluding an upper class minority) must come home to a task list of cleaning regardless of their differences in professions. As Ehrenreich bluntly states, “whatever else women did… we also did housework” (60). Men are not generally confronted with these domestic and social expectations to fulfill cleaning responsibilities, but women are seemingly obliged to satisfy housework requirements even when faced with “jobs, school, [and] child care” (60). While Ehrenreich illustrates both the potentially oppressive and equalizing qualities of housework, she does not explicitly mention the admirable fortitude and ability that are necessary ingredients for women to accomplish these housekeeping duties. The fact that females are capable of successfully balancing their outside lives alongside their burdens of housework is an extraordinary measure of endurance at the very least. Being a writer with a somewhat feminist bent, it was surprising that Ehrenreich did not further expand her descriptions to include this praiseworthy angle of the feminine characterization. The author provides valid arguments in acknowledgement of the exploitation and standardization of women via housework, but she does not extensively develop the perspective of housework as a possible means to showcase the remarkable strength and skill of women in this context.

"Maid to Order" Response

In essayist Barbara Ehrenreich’s thought-provoking “Maid to Order”, Ehrenreich explores the underlying ideology of housework to finally argue that the act of leaving a mess for someone else leads to an eventual “callousness and solipsism” (Ehrenreich 70). While many sociologists and feminists have explored the relationships between women and men and argued continuously about gender power struggles in the household, Ehrenreich takes the discussion one step further by exploring the emergence of the cleaning lady. Having someone clean for you, she argues, is essentially a manifestation of dominance. The emergence of a ‘servant class’ who’s purpose is to “[wipe] up the drippings of the affluent” (59), Ehrenreich argues, says much about our new values. One of her most interesting points, I believe, is the one she makes about the actual physical cleaning. The cleaning, she argues, is not true cleaning but rather to create “the appearance of having been cleaned” (67). The maids in maid businesses such as the one in which Ehrenriech worked are not there to make the house sanitary, but rather to create a set: an appearance of cleanliness and order in which the family can then operate. I found this to be a very thought-provoking argument: this causes us to reconsider the point of cleaning. While we originally would think to clean to sanitize and disinfect, this has become a secondary effect in our primary goal of creating an illusion of order. All in all, I found Ehrenreich’s close examination of the sociological underpinnings of household cleaning to be well-thought out and executed nicely.

"Maid to Order" Response

Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay “Maid to Order” highlights many interesting points and observations about the little known world of residential cleaning. At first glance, cleaning someone’s home seems as innocuous as taking out the trash. However, Ehrenreich exposes the darker side of this task; in particular, the power dynamics between the sexes comes to mind. More often than not, it is the women’s duty to clean the house and pick up after the men. This unspoken agreement between the genders has been one of the staples of the patriarchal society in America. The basic theory, from a feminist perspective, is that housework equates to power. Ehrenreich observes that, “To make a mess that another person will have to deal with…is to exert domination in one of its more silent and intimate forms” (61). Men have power because they force women (indirectly) to clean up after them. Even in contemporary times, women still do the majority of household cleaning. This fact compels Ehrenreich to introduce us to a “dea ex machina,” (62) the maid. She notes that in the past few decades, the home has slowly transformed into a workplace for these maids. What used to be an intimate household chore has now given way to the entrepreneurs seeking profits in a capitalist economy. In light of this recent trend, the author raises the following question: “Is the home a place where you would want to live?” (62) My answer is no, because I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting strangers probe through every nook and cranny of my house. The home should remain a private part of one’s life. Any conflict between men and women concerning household chores should be resolved in an assertive and definitive manner.

Ehrenreich Response

Barbara Ehrenreich's article "Maid to Order" is an interesting interpretation of the cleaning service workforce and its implications for society.  She claims that the continuation--indeed, the growth--of the maid service system is an indication that "men won" (Ehrenreich 62) the battle of delegating household chores, so that a wide gender gap still exists.  While the fact that women still do the majority of house work is significant, I remain unconvinced by several aspects of her article.  Mainly, I take issue with some of her extreme claims, as well as a crucial gap in her evidentiary support.

One of Ehrenreich's central claims does not ring true, since intentions that she attributes to people do not necessarily exist.  Specifically, she claims that men won the "chore wars" by making "a few strategic concessions" (62).  This implies that men colluded in a grand plot to avoid chores (a comical thought--too bad Aristophanes is long dead).  I do not think this is the case.  Rather, I think that the traditional division of "women's work" and "men's work" has been deeply imbedded in many cultures for thousands of years, and it will take more than a few decades to change that core value system when it has been in place for so long.  Is it really late enough in the game to declare a victory for either side?  Should one not expect ups and downs during the process of women's empowerment?  

Another melodramatic claim that Ehrenreich makes is that we are becoming utterly dependent on maids--that "The American overclass is raising a generation of young people who will, without constant assistance, suffocate in their own detritus" (69).  Ah, if only the biggest threat facing us was Death by Detritus!  Seriously, though, I think she need not worry so.  Even non-human creatures are able to order their living spaces.  Most of it is pretty intuitive.  Some people might not learn the most efficient or hygienic of cleaning practices, but surely even someone of below-average intelligence could figure out how to clean at least adequately.  Many homeowners hire house-cleaners, but most, I think, could theoretically do without.  They just do not want to.

Finally, Ehrenreich leaves a large gap in her evidence that leaves me unconvinced.  She has clearly interviewed and worked alongside many cleaners, which provides an important perspective.  However, she does not appear to have interviewed any actual homeowners who hire these people or the companies they work for.  Is their perspective not equally important to understanding the relationship between employers and employees?  How can she attribute various intentions or mentalities to employers if she has not interviewed any?  To me, her article seems like a rather one-sided story.

Response to Ehrenreich Essay

In what could easily have become a spewing of meaningless facts and figures regarding the changes in the roles of housework over the past decades, leaving the reader feeling somewhat unconvinced and apathetic, Ehrenreich instead uses personal experiences to make sense of and interpret such statistics in her essay "Maid to Order." By assuming the life of a paid housekeeper as part of her research, Ehrenreich is able to personally relate to many of the facts that she presents in her essay, helping to legitimize the validity of those facts. For example, Ehrenreich does not just say the world "below knee level" is filthy and subpar; rather, she describes in extreme detail the "dried bits of pasta glued to the floor" (59). The reader is left with an image of the floor in his or her mind, much more moving than a dull, uninteresting adjective. Later in the essay, when describing the inevitable loss in pay for workers as they transition from being "independents" to employees of a corporate cleaning service, Ehrenreich provides the reader with details about her own wages when working for The Maids International. The unjust rules of the cleaning service, such as "miss one day and your wage dropped to $6" or having to arrive at work at 7:30 but with billable hours not beginning until 8:00, are ones most likely only a true worker would know. It seems unlikely that a corporate cleaning service would advertise such restrictions when trying to hire employees in an already tight labor market. And yet, such details are significant additions to Ehrenreich's argument, allowing her to present the reader with a more thorough, more developed argument by providing both the advantages and disadvantages of the corporate cleaning services for the individual workers.