Alison Bayley
Chair, Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes
42 Heriot Row
Edinburgh
Scotland, EH3 6ES

6 September 2006

We have seen that you will be debating the use of the term “housewife” at your conference starting today, and are delighted that this underlines the importance of the housewife to society, which many of us have struggled to establish over years.  As we have noted before, it is women in Scotland who have again raised crucial economic and social issues!

In an airing of this debate on Any Answers (Radio 4, I July 2006), callers unanimously supported keeping the term “housewife” (transcript below).  A mother of a six-month-old objected that housewives are now considered “superfluous” and are “being pushed back into work so quickly”.  Another caller also criticised the government’s drive to get women into waged work, and described the devastating consequences of the demise of the housewife:

 Edited quote:

“…it was Mrs Thatcher who had to bring down the industries and encourage women to go out to work because that would then bring down the wage ... society is poorer for it, every aspect of it ... Not only do housewives look after their immediate family, they look after the neighbours, they look after their relatives, not only looking after, speaking to them, old people wouldn’t be as lonely in their homes … [The] Women’s Institute … should raise the profile of the housewife … if [the government] actually gave [housewives] money, you would find a great saving in your prisons, in your hospitals…[and] other aspects of the community…” 

 Pressures on carers within the family, whether or not we call ourselves housewives, are great.  The incomes of many families are falling; rural industries and farming are devalued and face bankruptcy; redundancies, insecure and casual employment are becoming the norm; cuts in welfare benefits and privatisation of public services are deepening; while the military budget goes up.  Women’s workload is increased as we try to compensate for fewer resources and increased stress with a double or triple working day.  We’re trying as best we can to meet the need for more caring work at home, and often intensifying our community and justice work – be it to keep a local hospital open, defend those we care for under attack, or oppose wars which our loved ones may be sent to fight.  But nobody seems to notice how much work we do and how many benefit.

We are deeply conscious of how endangered we are by the devaluing of the most basic work of society, while waged work outside the home is glorified.  We are left with less time to invest in our children, denying infants their right to be breastfed, depriving teenagers of our time when they most need a mature, loving presence.  Vulnerable people in the community are neglected; care in the family and community is replaced with uncaring institutions, single mothers are attacked for “not working”; traumatised asylum seekers (many rape survivors) with small children are vilified; and the work of women and men with disabilities, many of them carers as well, is ignored, they are told they should turn off the TV and work.  Women have asked: “What's to happen to those who need care if we're all out at work?”  Many of us have learnt that the term “feminist” has often stood for a denial that this work is necessary or desirable.  And however we view ourselves most women can only get very low waged jobs out of the home which usually also require looking after people and other housewives’ skills.  As caring work in the home gains greater recognition, it will be easier to win pay equity

The consequences of undermining women’s survival work are even more profound in countries of the South where the majority of the world’s housewives live, and where women’s and children’s survival seems not to be an economic or moral priority. Their lives are seen to be worth less than those of us in the North.  In the South women’s first caring work is often as subsistence farmers, for example, growing 80% of the food consumed in Africa.  Droughts and floods caused by global warming make that job harder all the time.  Women who are doing the caring work everywhere, albeit in very different circumstances. 

Some Radio 4 callers pinpointed the problem – it wasn’t the title that mattered so much as the devastating fact that women do so much that goes unrecognised, undervalued and unpaid.  A woman from Sutherland said: “Housewives have low status because we have no economic power.”  It certainly looks and feels like that, but we have shown that we do have power as housewives.

 The Wages for Housework Campaign has campaigned internationally to make women’s unwaged work visible since 1972 and since 2000 it has co-ordinated the Global Women’s Strike.  The Strike’s central demand is: “Payment for all caring work - in wages, pensions, land & other resources. What is more valuable than raising children & caring for others? Invest in life & welfare, not military budgets or prisons.”  The enclosed journal summarises our history (more at www.globalwomenstrike.net).

In 1995 at the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, with the support of over 1,200 NGOs worldwide, we won the decision by governments to measure and value in national accounts unwaged work in the home, on the land and in the community, including simultaneous activity.  It was a turning point globally. Trinidad & Tobago put it into law in 1996, Spain in 1998, Catalunya in 2005; and many countries have implemented this decision in the courts and in other ways.

The most spectacular achievement is Article 88 of the 1999 Venezuelan constitution: "… The State recognises work in the home as an economic activity that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth.  Housewives are entitled to Social Security in accordance with the law."  Now the government, as part of the redistribution of the country’s oil wealth to end poverty and in recognition of the unwaged work done in the home by women has agreed to pay a housewife's income of about £100 a month, equivalent to 80% of the minimum wage. 

There have been other gains this year.  Housewives in Argentina won pensions in recognition of their years of unwaged contributions and are exempt from paying into the pension scheme.  In Chile, the new President is proud to call herself a housewife and is prioritising pension reform to benefit housewives.  In Brazil, the Housewives’ Retirement Bill guarantees a pension to women who do not have their own income, have a low income or work at home.  Latin America is clearly taking the lead!

All this shows that the status of housewife, the unwaged carer, is changing, North and South.  As carers get recognition for our work and for the fact that without us everything stops, we can see women reclaiming that word and its derogatory association with dependency, and powerlessness is disappearing.   

 This movement of “just housewives” to change priorities and put caring of all kinds first is very powerful.  To value carers is to value those we care for.  We want men to be trained and expected to do caring work too, so that – often for the first time – they become aware of the needs and wishes and personalities of their own children.  And here we would like to introduce you to Payday, a network of men which co-ordinates men’s participation in the Strike and which also wants society to Invest in Caring Not Killing (see www.refusingtokill.net).  

 So you can see that for us a truly civilising caring society is where each individual cares and each individual counts.  Attacking those of us who are housewives attacks the caring that we spearhead.  We hope your debate goes well and that these considerations will be useful in your efforts to maintain the visibility of this most crucial survival work, and those who do it.

Yours for investing in caring not killing.

Selma James, Solveig Francis, Anna Thorburn
Global Women’s Strike

cc: Jean Alexander, Secretary SWRI, Angus Federation, Forfar
      Fay Mansell, Chair, National Federation of Women’s Institutes
      Marie Rennie, Peebles, c/o Radio 4, Any Answers
      Lynn Jackson, Cheshire, c/o Radio 4, Any Answers

 PS: We enclose a copy of “Creating A Caring Economy”, an interview with the President of the Women’s Development Bank of Venezuela, which provides funds to housewives enabling them to combine income generation projects with community organising.  Would you consider reviewing it for your magazine? 

 NC: Is housewife obsolete in all cases?

 JL: No … a point is that this was brought up by the rural WI in Scotland not England and Wales

NC: in a sense there is an official endorsement that being a housewife is not a proper thing to be?

 NC: Is there a better term that could be used?

 LJ: I am quite happy with housewife. I like house-manager. Its not the name that’s important, whatever I’m called I am the one who stays at home who doesn’t work any more.

Hello, good afternoon. I would like to ask what the Women’s Institute has ever done for housewives, or whatever you’d like to call them. First of all you get married and you have a husband and you are that man’s wife and then you have a child, you’re a housewife. And then you grow through that family, and I think housewives are the cornerstone of our society. I think its sad the demise of housewives. I think it should be looked upon as a profession. I think it covers so much. Your hospitals wouldn’t be looking at obese people if you had the housewives. The children would be disciplined. You would have a home for them to come to. It’s about 36 years that I’ve been a housewife and I remember at the beginning it was latch-key kids they were termed as, and society has demised since that and I believe it was Mrs Thatcher who had to bring down the industries and encourage women to go out to work because that would then bring down the wage, and that is when the housewives then went out to work. And I think society is poorer for it, every aspect of it, and our prisons certainly wouldn’t be full.

NC: So you sympathise with the caller who said there is a drive from the centre, from government to get people back to work.

 MR: Yes I do and I think the the Women’s Institute is perpetrating that. I don’t think they’ve done me any good. Not only do housewives look after their immediate family, they look after the neighbours, they look after their relatives, not only looking after, speaking to them, old people wouldn’t be as lonely in their homes, there is so much a housewife does in her career from beginning to end, that it stabilises society, and I think the Women’s Institute … I don’t know who they are … I don’t know what they do, so I don’t what right they’ve got to be saying anything. I think they should raise the profile of the housewife.

NC: And how could that be done? Is there something that could be done by government? Even if it’s a simple thing like form-filling, or the respect that’s paid to people when they stay at home, the paternity and maternity leave and so on, those sorts of things would help would they?

MR: Well I think if they actually gave them money to support them being in the home, you would find a great saving as I say in your prisons, in your hospitals, and your husband even, the support a wife gives to her husband’s physical and mental well-being, its just endless. And I think if the government supported them with money they would find other aspects of the community wouldn’t be taking up so much resources.