The Rewards of a Rich Life

Why 'women's work' is never done.

by Nina Winham

Our plum tree is covered with plums. They grow secretly during the early summer, green against green leaves. Then, in early August, they turn colour, and suddenly the tree is laden with dusky purple fruit.

Soon I’ll have friends over to make chutney and barbecue sauce. (There’s only so much jam one can eat.) We’ll dice ginger and peppers and get a free facial by hanging over the steaming canning pot while batches of jars go in for their purifying bath.

At the end, we’ll have product. Not the most plentiful output you’ve ever seen, but the by-product is rich: we laugh, compare stories, commiserate. We get covered in plum juice, mess up the kitchen, and mop it all up eventually. We have fun. And in that context, the savoury treats we create hold a flavour no store-bought bottle could ever provide.

Once, this was what households were all about. Everything took more labour: most food was cooked from scratch, clothing was stitched by hand, and canning was a core necessity—executed in far greater volume—for making it through the winter. Houses had pantries, workshops, sewing rooms. What was produced was valued because the effort to produce it was known.

It wasn’t easy—and don’t get me wrong, I don’t yearn to return to a time where bone-wearying work was required just to keep food on the table and clothing on backs. (Thank god, thank god, for the diaper service!) Still, in our rush to emancipate ourselves from every last stitch of work, I wonder, have we lost something?

In his book How Much Is Enough?, Alan Durning writes:

“Over the past century, the mass market has taken over an increasing number of the productive tasks once provided within the household, diminishing people’s practical reliance on one another… Members of the consumer class enjoy a degree of personal independence unprecedented in human history, yet hand in hand comes a decline in our attachments to each other. Informal visits between neighbours and friends, family conversation, and time spent at family meals have all diminished… since mid-century.”

We know that part of the reason for this is that “women’s work” has never been valued appropriately. So we’ve dumped the drudge and opted for the office, where we work (hard) to earn money. We use the money to buy stuff. As we’re all learning, we buy much more stuff than we need—at the expense of the environment and without always adding value to our lives.

Durning spins a tale of “consumer households”: centres of leisure that are lacking in meaning. A 1978 study of working class seniors in the U.K. found them disillusioned with the plenty they’d achieved. “Affluence, as they saw it, had broken the bonds of mutual assistance that adversity once forged. In the end, they were waiting out their days in their sitting rooms, each with his or her own television.”

Brrr! Why then have we so demonized household work—the work that drew us together in our homes and neighbourhoods, that collected our energy and talents into production, that nourished and housed us? If true wealth lies in rich relationships, resilience against hard times, and successful collaboration, why do we work so hard for financial wealth and reap so little reward?

I don’t know the answer, but I ponder the question. I truly am glad to avoid some forms of household labour. But I don’t want to earn my way into an impoverished life full of stuff but not relationships.

Anyone for a quilting bee?

Nina Winham is principal of New Climate Strategies (newclimate.ca), helping clients build value through sustainability practices and positive change. Did she mention that she’s really, really grateful for the diaper service?