Married to the Job (RLE Feminist Theory) by Janet Finch

Author:Janet Finch [Finch, Janet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781136195327
Google: AV9CEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-11-12T05:44:59+00:00

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Two for the Price of One: Back-Up Services

Although the boundaries between ‘peripheral’ and ‘back-up’ services cannot be drawn neatly, the category of ‘back-up services’ is used here to denote those activities which, unlike those in the ‘peripheral’ category, are central to the daily performance of a man's work, but of a routine and non-specialised character. Fowlkes characterises these as ‘girl Friday’ contributions, which she sees mainly as providing semi-skilled ‘women's work’ services (Fowlkes, 1980, pp. 64–5).

The possibilities for this kind of contribution vary with different types of work: as appropriate, a wife (and indeed other members of the family) may find herself answering the telephone, taking messages, filing, or dealing with visits from clients or sales representatives. Some wives may be doing this on a regular basis, and others become incorporated just at times of crisis, or when their husbands’ work load is particularly heavy; for example, when a report has to be written to meet a deadline, or in a pre-election period. Platt reports that wives of social researchers were incorporated, usually unpaid, ‘to help with typing, routine statistical tests, or hand counting of data when a computer is not available’ (Platt, 1976, p. 123). Similarly, a study of East Anglian farmers reports that about three-quarters of farmers’ wives were providing services such as ‘answering the phone, dealing with callers, and running the occasional farm errand’ (Newby, Bell, Rose and Saunders, 1978, p. 68). It may well be that this figure of three-quarters actually under-represents the participation of farmers’ wives across the whole spectrum of farming. Certainly the traditional pattern of hill farms was that wives and daughters provided almost all the female labour (Williams, 1969, pp. 33 ff).

The use of the home as a workbase is, again, one type of work organisation likely to draw a wife into providing back-up services. If a self-employed man, for example, does not have the facilities of a separate office, the home is likely to become the focus both for requests for his services and for the administration of his work, and ample scope is provided for a wife's incorporation. This would apply to a self-employed journalist, driving instructor, window-cleaner, or a whole range of high and low status jobs. Even where the husband is an employee, the use of the home is likely to draw in his wife. This is well illustrated by Cain's work on the police, where the wife of the rural policeman (whose home is also a police station) ‘is expected, if not formally required, to take telephone messages and attend to callers in her husband's absence’ (Cain, 1973, p. 127). Exactly the same applies to wives of the clergy, who all, without exception, reported their involvement in this kind of work.

A wife's availability for these routine back-up tasks is related in part to her own employment status; but certainly for full-time housewives such apparently trivial activities represent a not inconsiderable contribution to their husbands’ work. In terms of time taken up, it can be experienced as a

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