Women's Work is Communal*
*(Historically). On weaving cloth and community.
This week, I’m taking a look at women’s work… in prehistory. On Thursday, I’ll share some of your book recommendations. And sometime soon, there will be a sudden, two-week hiatus while I have a baby.
On a friend’s recommendation, I recently read and enjoyed Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times. Barber is a professor of archeology and linguistics, and the book presents her research on prehistoric textiles for a lay audience.
I’m an ideal reader for this book (I had my own little inkle loom as a kid) and I love the way she puts together scraps of information to build up a tapestry of how women’s work changed. One of my favorite details is that Barber complements her archeology with attempts to replicate the fragments she finds. Hanging her own looms, reproducing weaves, etc. helps her have a clear sense of what the work was like to do and can correct misapprehensions.
But the reason the book feels particularly relevant to Other Feminisms is that Barber is interested in why thread and cloth were work that fell to women. She sees weaving and spinning as work that fit the lives of women as mothers.
Mothers have toddlers underfoot, and need a workspace that is relatively safe for marauding children (keeping the children safe from the work and vice versa). Mothers benefit from work that is somewhat interruptible, as a child demands attention or needs to nurse. And mothers have an easier time with shared work, when a group of women can watch children together or trade off baby- vs heddle-wrangling.
Farming was this kind of work, Barber believes, when it was mostly done by hand. But when it became more plow-and-livestock focused, it became less safe and less slow. Similarly, when weaving was mechanized, it became more productive, but a narrower subset of workers could take on the work. A two-year old can’t crawl through a factory floor.
I was struck by this thread in Barber’s ethnography, since much of “pink-collar” work today does not match the model of communal weaving. A woman who does care work or cleaning work is often travelling from house to house, working alone, in a professionalized context where her child is not welcome (and her employer’s house is not baby proofed).
Working mothers are not new, but working mothers who are cut off from their children and from other mothers are very new (if you take the long view of human history).
One thing I’m looking forward to in my upcoming maternity leave is the chance to simply walk twenty minutes, baby tied on with a wrap, and join the friend who recommended Women’s Work, spending an afternoon with both our babies. But I know this is unusual.
Reading Women’s Work, I thought more about the range of jobs I might be able to take on that would complement being a mother. (Emails are the most easily set-down-and-picked-up part of my job). Most of all, it made me wish for a duplex or houses around a courtyard, where there is a clear place to share work and mothering with friends.
My answer to both questions is three words - part time work. I've been part time since my twins were born over six years ago and while it's not nearly as common/accepted as it should be, it's not as uncommon as you might think - I recommend Work, Pause, Thrive by Lisen Stromberg for those who might be interested in the details of who/how/how often workers make that choice. Similarly I had what amounted to an unofficial job share at my prior employer; I worked M-Th-F and I had a coworker who also had two young children who worked Tu-W-Th. We worked on similar projects and made a point to cover for each other on the other's days at home. It was a great setup and one I've never successfully replicated. If part time work was more common for parents I can see teaming with another family to cover child care. For example, our beloved nanny who cared for our children part time for 6 years just changed fields and started a new job in the financial industry. If she had a part time job I would have HAPPILY watched her daughter along with mine 2.5 days/week and she could have had them both the other 2.5 days.
Also, because work outside the home for pay is not the only kind of work that I do, I have always been grateful when systems have a communal aspect baked in. For example, our church has a Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atrium for children who don't attend K-8 at our parish where CGS is part of the curriculum. Each room of the atrium has a lead guide and an assistant, and the program provides child care for both of these roles each week if it is needed (and all these roles had to be assigned since each person in them had to have safe environment training). Pre-COVID I was a child care provider but there was always a specified "back up" provider because the idea that sometimes the primary child care provider might have a sick child, or during the course of the school year become too pregnant to provide care, or any number of other scenarios was accepted as normal! I mean, I'm sure the primary goal was to allow kids enrolled in the program their time in the atrium no matter what, but the result at least for me was the feeling that we were all banding together to care for our passel of progeny.
a huge problem for any parent is working in a place where receiving phone calls from home is not allowed. back in the 50's and 60's when my sibs and i were latchkey kids, my mother, who was an RN, wouldn't work any place where she couldn't receive a phone call and that ruled out a lot of jobs for her. but, it was a genuine life line. consider someone working on a production line. i know it would be difficult - but it must be allowed if we are to value parents (not just women altho' this often falls only to the mothers) in the work force. i worked for 7 years at a small engineering firm where the key man was a custodial parent. his views on parenting were light years ahead of those of most (male) engineers. when anyone's kid called, he just said 'go'.
every boss should be like that. the company was highly productive because, since the convivial attitude was from the top down, we all worked really well together.