Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-fvjsw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-12T05:04:56.533Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Is It Wrong To Pay For Housework?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Gabrielle Meagher
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper assesses arguments that paying for housework compromises the moral integrity of either the buyer or seller or both. I find that none provides adequate justification for avoiding paying for housework. Instead, I argue that the vigorous pursuit of justice for women workers will best remedy injustice in service sector occupations, including paid housework.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 17 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Love and Work , Spring 2002, pp. 52 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Arat‐Koç, Sedef. 1989. In the privacy of our own home: Foreign domestic workers as solution to the crisis in the domestic sphere in Canada. Studies in Political Economy 28 (spring): 33–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benn, Piers. 1999. Is sex morally special? Journal of Applied Philosophy 16 (3): 235–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergmann, Barbara. 1998. The only ticket to equality: Total androgyny, male style. Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 9 (spring): 75–86.Google Scholar
Figart, Deborah, and Lapidus, June 1995. A gender analysis of U. S. labor market policies for the working poor. Feminist Economics 1 (3): 60–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folbre, Nancy, and Weisskopf, Thomas. 1998. Did father know best? Families, markets, and the supply of caring labor. In Economics, values and organization, ed. Ben‐Ner, Avner and Putterman, Louis. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Jean. 2000. Domestic labor revisited: A feminist critique of Marxist economics. In Inside the household: From labor to care, ed. Himmelweit, Susan. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Giles, Wenona, and Arat‐Koç, Sedef. 1994. Maid in the market: Women's paid domestic labor. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.Google Scholar
Gorz, André. 1989. Critique of economic reason. Trans. Handyside, Gillian and Turner, Chris. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Gorz, André. 1994. The new servants. In Capitalism, socialism, ecology. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Harvey, J. 2000. Social privilege and moral subordination. Journal of Social Philosophy 31 (2): 177–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Held, Virginia. 1987. Feminism and moral theory. In Women and moral theory, ed. Kittay, Eva Feder. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Held, Virginia. 1993. Feminist morality: transforming culture, society, and politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Himmelweit, Susan. 1995. The discovery of “unpaid work.” Feminist Economics 1 (2): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie. 1983. The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hondagneu‐Sotelo, Pierrette. 1994. Regulating the unregulated: Domestic workers' social networks. Social Problems 41 (1): 50–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, Cameron Lynne, and Sirianni, Carmen eds., 1996. Working in the service society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Meagher, Gabrielle. 1997. Recreating “domestic service”? Institutional cultures and the evolution of paid household work. Feminist Economics 10 (2): 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meagher, Gabrielle. 1999. The ultimate lousy job? Evaluating the construction of paid household work. Ph.D. diss., Faculty of Economics and Business, The University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Meagher, Gabrielle. 2000. A struggle for recognition: Strategies for work life reform in the domestic services industry. Economic and Industrial Democracy 21 (1): 9–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendes, Jennifer Bickham. 1998. Of mops and maids: Contradictions and continuities in bureaucratized domestic work. Social Problems 45 (1): 114–35.Google Scholar
Milkman, Ruth, Reese, Ellen, and Roth, Benita. 1998. The macrosociology of paid domestic labor. Work and Occupations 25 (4): 483–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Julie. 1999. Of markets and martyrs: Is it OK to pay well for care? Feminist Economics 5 (3): 43–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noddings, Nel. 1984. Caring, a feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ostrander, Susan. 1987. Women using other women. Contemporary Sociology 16 (1): 51–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1972. Wittgenstein and justice. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1981. Justice: On relating private and public. Political Theory 9 (3): 327–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radin, Margaret Jane. 1996. Contested commodities. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ram, Monder, and Holliday, Ruth. 1993. Relative merits: Family culture and kinship in small firms. Sociology 27 (2): 629–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rollins, Judith. 1985. Between women: Domestics and their employers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Dorothy. 1997. Spiritual and menial housework. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 9 (51): 51–80.Google Scholar
Romero, Mary. 1988. Chicanas modernize domestic service. Qualitative Sociology 11 (4): 319–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Romero, Mary. 1992. Maid in the USA. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ruddick, Sara. 1990. Maternal thinking: Towards a politics of peace. London: The Women's Press.Google Scholar