User:Emmamwasserman/Reproductive labor

The Racial Stratification of Reproductive Labor
The industrialization in the nineteenth century morphed society’s roles assigned to men and women, with men being seen as the primary breadwinners for their family and women as home maker. However, many middle-class white families in the United States were able to afford to outsource some of the more unpleasant household chores to domestic servants. This racial and ethnic background of the women hired in these roles varied by location. In the Northeast United States, European immigrants, mainly from Gemany or Ireland, made up the majority of domestic servants until the beginning of the twentieth century. Throughout time, as the social status of the role declined and the overall working conditions worsened it started to become more racially stratified. The role was mainly taken on by African American women in the South, Mexicans in the Southwest, and Japanese people in northern California and Hawaii. In addition to workers in this position making low wages, they were also often treated as subordinates by their employer, the woman of the house, and the only women that would take these jobs did so because there were no other opportunities available to them.

This changed in the late 20th century, where the amount of women working as domestic servants declined due to modernization, development, and an increase in other job opportunities for the women previously taking on this role. However, by the turn of the century there was a resurgence of demand for this type of work, but this time these roles were being taken on largely by immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.

(This are Bb1822s wiki edits ^)

Wages for Housework
Universal Basic Income and/or Citizens Basic Income has been proposed as a possible solution to the undervaluing of reproductive labor. Citizens Basic Income has been described as a universal grant to all citizens within a state with no previous or future requirements based on labor market participation. Benefits will be offered regardless of income, with citizenship as the only entitlement. Citizens basic income aims to dissolve the relationship between work and income, which in turn would benefit women by removing traditional labor restraints such as exclusion from employer-based social insurance benefits. Family models in liberal democracies lay at the root of the issue for women facing exclusion from welfare state benefits and the decommodification of reproductive labor. Historically in these societies, women need to marry a man in order to get access to social insurance. Moreover, the exploitation of reproductive labor in Western democracies occurs through “the gendered, racial, and socioeconomic connections between access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and infant mortality, particularly in the black community; and the deployment of gay parenting as a normalizing discourse in the legalization of gay marriage, in contrast to the very real legal, financial, and social obstacles faced by lesbian and gay people providing care for partners and friends disabled by HIV/AIDS and other health challenges”. Providing UBI or CBI to all citizens would provide the welfare state a means to offer social assistance without basis on productive or reproductive labor, ultimately helping women who are exploited at the hands of capitalist reproduction.