Housewife
A housewife is a woman whose role is running or managing her family's home—housekeeping, which may include caring for her children; cleaning and maintaining the home; making, buying and/or mending clothes for the family; buying, cooking, and storing food for the family; buying goods that the family needs for everyday life; partially or solely managing the family budget—and who is not employed outside the home. The male equivalent is the househusband.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a housewife as a married woman who is in charge of her household. The British Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary defines a housewife as "the mistress of a household; a female domestic manager ".
In the Western world, stereotypical gender roles, particularly for women, were challenged by the feminist movement in the latter 20th century to allow some women to choose whether to be housewives or to have a career. However, financial barriers such as expensive childcare or disability can impede either. Changing economics also increased the prevalence of two-income households.
Sociology and economics
Some feminists and non-feminist economists note that the value of housewives' work is ignored in standard formulations of economic output, such as GDP or employment figures. A housewife typically works many unpaid hours a week and often depends on income from her spouse’s work for financial support. The importance of housewives' work is sometimes disregarded in standard economic figures such as GDP or employment data because of how these metrics are measured. Housewives' work is excluded from GDP statistics since it is not exchanged in the market.Some economists state that housewives frequently work long hours doing a variety of tasks such as cooking, cleaning, childcare, eldercare, and managing family finances. These chores are critical for maintaining families and supporting other family members' productive activities, such as paid jobs.
Traditional societies
Contrary to a common belief that in hunter-gatherer societies men typically hunted animals for meat while women gathered other foods such as grain, fruit, and vegetables, ethnographic studies of recent and current hunter-gatherer societies show women actively participating in hunting, as among the Agta people of the Philippines, where women hunt even while menstruating, pregnant, and breastfeeding. Fossil and archaeological evidence also indicate that women have a long history of hunting. In addition, evidence from exercise science shows that women are better suited to endurance activities, which might have been conducive to pursuing prey over long distances. However, an attempted verification of this study found "that multiple methodological failures all bias their results in the same direction...their analysis does not contradict the wide body of empirical evidence for gendered divisions of labor in foraging societies".In rural societies where the main source of work is farming, women have also taken care of gardens and animals around the house, generally helping men with heavy work when a job needed to be done quickly, usually because of the season.
Examples of the heavy work involving farming that a traditional housewife in a rural society would do are:
- Picking fruit when it is ripe for market
- Planting rice in a paddy field
- Harvesting and stacking grain
- Cutting hay for animals
Whether the productive contributions of women were considered "work" varied by time and culture. Throughout much of the 20th century, the women working on a family farm, no matter how much work they did, would be counted in the US census as being unemployed, whereas the men doing the same or work were counted as being employed as farmers.
Modern society
A research based on 7733 respondents who were aged 18–65 and legally married women in 20 European countries showed men and women share less housework in countries that publicly support gender equality. On the contrary, women did more housework than men.Full-time homemakers in modern times usually share income produced by members of the household who are employed; wage-earners working full-time benefit from the unpaid work provided by the homemaker; otherwise, the performance of such work could be a household expense. US states with community property recognize joint ownership of marital property and income, and, unless a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement is followed, most marital households in the US operate as a joint financial team and file taxes jointly.
In The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, she talks about how society pressures women to find meaning and purpose in their relationships with men. In the chapter "The Women in Love", De Beauvoir explains that women, especially housewives, are taught to focus on caring for their husbands and children. This may lead to these women ignoring their own self identity and self needs. De Beauvoir argues that women in love, particularly those in roles like housewives, tend to define themselves through their relationships. This can make them dependent on their husbands for a feeling of fulfillment. For many women, their worth is tied to how well they care for the home and family, rather than pursuing their own dreams or desires. She also criticizes how this leads to an unequal relationship, where the woman is expected to sacrifice her own self while the man is seen as the strong and independent one. De Beauvoir believes this keeps women from being truly free and stops them from growing as individuals. It forces them to always depend on their significant other. Simone de Beauvoir wants to uphold a new way of thinking about love and relationships. She wants to put upon others that both partners are seen as equal, so this will eventually allow women to be more independent and self-fulfilling.
Education
The method, necessity, and extent of educating housewives has been debated since at least the 20th century.By country
In China
In imperial China, women were bound to homemaking by the doctrines of Confucianism and cultural norms. Generally, girls did not attend school and, therefore, spent the day doing household chores with their mothers and female relatives. In most cases, the husband was alive and able to work, so the wife was almost always forbidden to take a job and mainly spent her days at home or doing other domestic tasks. As Confucianism spread across East Asia, this social norm was also observed in Korea, Japan and Vietnam. As foot binding became common after the Song dynasty, many women lost the ability to work outside.After the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, these norms were gradually loosened and many women were able to enter the workforce. Shortly thereafter, a growing number of females began to be permitted to attend schools. Starting with the rule of the People's Republic of China in 1949, all women were freed from compulsory family roles. During the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, some women even worked in fields that were traditionally reserved for males.
In modern China, housewives are no longer as common, especially in the largest cities and other urban areas. Many modern women work simply because one person's income is insufficient to support the family, a decision made easier by the fact that it is common for Chinese grandparents to watch after their grandchildren until they are old enough to go to school. Nonetheless, the number of Chinese housewives has been steadily rising in recent years as China's economy expands.
In India
In a traditional Hindu family, the head of the family is the Griha Swami and his wife is the Griha Swamini. The Sanskrit words Grihast and Grihasta perhaps come closest to describing the entire gamut of activities and roles undertaken by the homemaker. Grih is the Sanskrit root for house or home; Grihasta and Grihast are derivatives of this root, as is Grihastya. The couple lives in the state called Grihastashram or family system and together they nurture the family and help its members through the travails of life. The woman who increments the family tree and protects those children is described as the Grihalakshmi and Grihashoba. The elders of the family are known as Grihshreshta. The husband or wife may engage in countless other activities which may be social, religious, political or economic in nature for the ultimate welfare of the family and society. However, their unified status as joint householders is the nucleus from within which they operate in society. The traditional status of a woman as a homemaker anchors them in society and provides meaning to their activities within the social, religious, political and economic framework of their world. However, as India undergoes modernisation, many women are in employment, particularly in the larger cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore, where most women will work. The role of the male homemaker is not traditional in India, but it is socially accepted in urban areas. According to one sociologist's study in 2006, twelve percent of unmarried Indian men would consider being a homemaker according to a survey conducted by Business Today. One sociologist, Sushma Tulzhapurkar, called this a shift in Indian society, saying that a decade ago, "it was an unheard concept and not to mention socially unacceptable for men to give up their jobs and remain at home." However, only 22.7 percent of Indian women are part of the labor force, compared to 51.6 percent of men; thus, women are more likely to be caregivers because most do not work outside the home.Mahila Shakti Samajik Samiti is a women's society composed mainly of housewives.
Sadhna Sinha is current president of the samiti.