Implication Of Homemaking Beyond Home

Many writers explore the notion that cultural differences may inflict feelings of disconnection for their central characters. This is shown in the two texts ‘Neighbours’ and ‘Migrant Woman on a Melbourne Tram’, as both protagonists struggle to cope with their newly exposed environment. Despite this, we learn that it can be resolved through the acceptance of one another, yet others may remain to dissociate themselves from society.

The article “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective” by Angela Davis addresses on the liberation of women from their socially regarded functions in society. She explores the idea of capitalist critique and feminism, and she argues that housework is annoying as much as it is disempowering women in the society and women need to be released and discharged from these duties (Angela, 2011). Angela's unique perspective on women's roles as housewives and history of house works gives us a clear perspective on the plight of women in society. The article shares a different perspective to the traditional view of women as housewives in the community. Instead of judging women on their femininity and history of their work

Belonging is a complex, multi-faceted concept encompassing a wide range of different aspects. The need to belong to family and culture is a universal human need which provides a sense of value and emotional stability, and in many respects forges one’s identity. Alienation and disconnection often creates feelings of isolation, depression and loss of identity. A struggle with cultural identity is evident in Peter Skrzynecki’s poems ‘Migrant Hostel’ and ‘Feliks Skrzynecki’, where he examines a division between his pre-war Polish heritage and his newfound Australian way of life. The movement away from his European cultural heritage towards a more Australian identity created disorientation for Skrzynecki, and these feelings of disconnection

A lack of belonging can destroy a sense of placement in society. This statement is thoroughly explored in the poem, ‘Migrant Hostel’ by Peter Skrzynecki, investigating the concepts of alienation and dislocation through the migrant’s lack of acceptance by the Australian citizens. The migrants are also unable to find a fixed home, and therefore feel no sense of stability or permanence. This transitory nature is best identified in the simile, ‘We lived like birds of a passage/Always sensing a change/In the weather’, where the comparison to birds emphasises the absence of a home. It is clear that the migrants feel unable to adapt to Australian society, constantly moving and never settling. The migrant’s exclusion is further highlighted in the lines,

Social reproduction refers to the continuous intergenerational physically and emotionally exhausting household labour that is needed to maintain life (Trotz, lecture, Jan 13, 2016). This kind of labour though is considered to be a woman’s duty. Since an economic activity happens where there is a market, social reproduction is not considered as one as it doesn’t have a visible market. Even though, it doesn’t have market value, domestic work greatly contribute to the economy (Waring, 2013). Since this work is done in homes and by women who are usually marginalized, it remains invisible and thus not considered for pay. This kind of work depends on the traditional division of labour in which women are seen as housewives while men, breadwinners. Thus, the gendering of social reproduction is a result of “doing gender,” where women’s abilities to be mothers are naturalized (Coltrane, 1989); in other words, women are made to fit into the simplistic “domestic = family = heterosexual woman = care and love” equation (Manalansan & Martin, 2008, p.2), while any man who does the caring work in a family is feminized and considered a lesser man (Coltrane, 1989).Thus, a woman’s femininity depends on her motherhood while a man’s masculinity depends on “not doing mother’s work” (Coltrane, 1989, p.473).

“The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, whereas children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised” (Desmond 2016, 293). Evictions! The root of poverty? Matthew Desmond’s novel “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in America City, portrays the lives of tenants, landlords, and house marketing on the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee. Desmond gives the reader overwhelming evidence and revealing testimony illustrating the major impact of inadequate housing on individuals, local, and national level. Desmond’s analysis and observation of his case study enables him to portray the reality of poverty, and to persuade the readers that evictions are a major consequence, and primary contributors in the relentless cycle of poverty. Desmond build his argument using two Aristotelian rhetorical appeals, ethos, logos and inductive reasoning to illustrates the importance of ending the cycle of poverty.

Although immigrant women play a big role in America’s society and economy, they have been constantly mistreated and looked down upon throughout history. Not only do they face the burden of the stratifications that their gender entails but they also struggle to adopt the American culture and norms. America was viewed as the land of opportunities and economic prosperity, a perspective that draws in many immigrant women who were willing to leave their families and possessions to come to this foreign country in hopes of a better life. In America, they faced many challenges as they not only had to work long hours but also took care of their families and do housework as well. They struggled to make a standard living out of low wage jobs and assimilating into America’s society. Today, the treatment of immigrant women has improved greatly as they have stood together and fought for their rights. Immigrant women have built communities and held strikes for better pay and treatment. Although America has made great strides in improving treatment of immigrant women, there is still social injustice. Immigrant women have come a long way from the first time they entered America until now, but their stories are often left untold and omitted from American history.

Although females had push into the right direction, they still did face some adversity. “Many fully employed women defined themseleves as ‘homemakers’, outside the sphere of wage work” (Abelson, 117). This shows that even with all these changes for the better women did not shy away from their traditional roots.

The structure of the novel, Homegoing, is very distinct and unique. I believe the way Yaa Gyasi decided to structure her book made the novel and each individual story within the novel more profound. Most books we read today usually follow the main character or possibly a few characters. I cannot remember the last time I read a book where each individual chapter contained a new story from a new character. Homegoing is set apart from other novels due to the dramatic effect the generational stories have on the readers. Not only does the structure of the novel grab readers attention, it makes a distinction between the two lines of families, it also shows us what is similar between the two families, and it connects the past to the present.

Americans have been putting in longer hours at work, and the situation will be more serious when both of the couples decide to go to work. Micheal Pollan is assuming that women are taking charge of the most cooking work, and the amount of time spent in home cooking decline dramatically with the entrance of women into workplace. Indeed the kitchen work was mostly done by women, and home cooking had been denigrated for a long time as “women’s work”. It is a little controversial question that whether a male talking about the importance of cooking tend to return women back to the kitchen. Some feminist argued that cooking was a form of oppression to women, because cooking has traditionally been regarded as part of housework, and underserving the attention of the male.

Nowadays, in a growing number of housewives who came out of their family and became a worker, we unconsciously admitted the phenomenon that women and men are no gender differences. Under this recognition, we focused more on class equality instead of gender equality. However, in Maria Mies’s Colonization and Housewifization, she questioned about this dissertation by giving examples and facts.

Times have changed significantly from the 70’s when I was a child. My mother was a stay at home wife for the first 10 years of my life. She cooked, cleaned, and made sure my brother and I were off to school daily. Although she didn’t have an outside job, she as well as many women believed a stay at home mom was a full time job.

The ILO report has shown, housemaid workers are present in every single country for which data are available. They cook, clean and wash, look after children and elderly people in need of care, and take care of a myriad of other daily duties in households. Based on official statistics from 117 countries and territories, the new ILO estimates presented in this report point to 52.6 million housemaid workers across the world at the end of 2010. 56 Around the 43.7 million female housemaids were employed across the world in the year 2010.57 As a single occupational category, this is a huge workforce. Housemaid work is therefore an important entry point for women in the labour market, and so improving working conditions in the sector has broader ramifications for greater gender equality in society.

Within the decade of immigration and industrial expansion, a unique historical condition came into existence. Immigrant women were increasingly hired especially by food-processing and textile factories. Local women, however, were almost entirely outside of expanding industrial production or they were employed at only marginal levels. As the following pages will discuss, this peculiarly high economic activity of immigrant women was relied on the distinct work identities of them. The cultural meaning of work which were naturalized by immigrant women in their everyday life were stark contrast to restrictive gender order in Bursa; this enabled them to enter into factories while local women were substantially staying in domestic spheres.

Within these past few years, Indonesian domestic workers (hereafter IDWs) have caught people’s attention with the publication of their novels, short stories, and poetries. The emergence of Sastra Buruh Migran (migrant workers’ literature), a genre which refers to the creative writing of IDWs who work in countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore (Retnaningdyah 23), apparently has challenged the negative labels which IDWs have endured. In their homeland, IDWs suffer from bad stereotyping: domestic workers are nothing but physical workers who have to operate for a meagre salary, in often bad conditions. As domestic work is not considered as a formal employment, this means exclusion from the national labor legislation (Factsheet). Similarly, in her ethnographic research on Latina domestic worker, Hondagneu-Sotelo asserts that people perceive paid domestic worker as ‘under the table’ economy because this particular work “takes place in a private home” (9). Also, in the context of transnational labor market, such perception still applies for the foreign migrant workers. In IDWs case, while facing marginalization in a multiple sense, they are no stranger to stereotypes like “uncivilized and stupid” simply because of their “short of English skills” and lacking “sufficient knowledge and experience to handle housework in a modern household” (Lan in Loveband