Tumblr backup: Women's work
Dec. 16th, 2017 06:48 pmLook, can we all just agree that women’s work, however it has been defined by the societies in question, has always been essential and required a variety of skills, and often included things/was valued in ways that are overlooked by modern people casually imagining what life was like in historical times
WHILE STILL ACKNOWLEDGING that, in most times and places, women’s work has been undervalued compared to men’s work, and moreover that there have always been women who found themselves unsuited to/confined by their society’s expectations of them, and did not or could not conform to them, and, if they were determined and lucky, were able to achieve things outside the sphere of what was considered in their society women’s work?
And that’s not even getting into the fact that, across broad swaths of cultures, for high-status women, especially in wealthier and more stratified societies, a woman’s status and that of her entire family was often inversely correlated with how useful (as opposed to ornamental) the work she did was, and directly correlated with restrictions placed on her appearance, behavior, and movement.
WHILE STILL ACKNOWLEDGING that, in most times and places, women’s work has been undervalued compared to men’s work, and moreover that there have always been women who found themselves unsuited to/confined by their society’s expectations of them, and did not or could not conform to them, and, if they were determined and lucky, were able to achieve things outside the sphere of what was considered in their society women’s work?
And that’s not even getting into the fact that, across broad swaths of cultures, for high-status women, especially in wealthier and more stratified societies, a woman’s status and that of her entire family was often inversely correlated with how useful (as opposed to ornamental) the work she did was, and directly correlated with restrictions placed on her appearance, behavior, and movement.