If you can't see invisible housework, you can't see women

New Weekly

2024-04-29 12:03Published on the official account of Guangdong New Weekly

Author | Mario

Edit | Zhan Tengyu

  Title Picture | "We Are Not Good Enough"

Recently, a hot post circulated on the Internet, asking: What are the little things that make you want to break up in an instant?

The replies are varied, mostly small daily things, but each one makes people angry with nodules, especially for women, such as:

When I opened the cupboard, I found that the used peanut butter was not covered with a lid and a fork was stuck in it;

Dirty clothes to be changed are thrown all over the ground, but they are not put in the dirty clothes basket;

Uneaten bread is always open, and will not be sealed or put in the refrigerator, so exposed to the air to ferment;

Deliberately not tidying up the subject's bedside table, two weeks later, there were four finished Coke cans, scattered plates, cups, forks, and bowls, and a mess of clutter......

A scene that makes people's blood pressure levels explode. (Photo/Weibo)

If you are indifferent, unimpressed, and bothered by all this, it proves that someone is "carrying the weight" for you.

In everyday life, there are countless such "invisible chores" that are silently solved along with soaring blood pressure, and most of the time, they are classified as "women's work".

The times are soaring forward, black technology is emerging in an endless stream, and women's voice and sense of existence have improved, but some of the women's dilemmas hidden in daily life that should be alleviated still seem to be unsolvable. Many chores cannot be replaced and changed hands because they have to be "seen" first—whether they are genuinely difficult to detect or someone is selectively blind.

Invisible housework, infinitely extending black holes

For a long time, "invisible housework" has been difficult to concretize, and has been treated as vulgar and worthless daily life. Countless housewives will complain after tea and dinner: even if the whole family is full of food and drink, and the house is clean, they still can't get a moment of rest.

Until 2020, Japan published a book called "The Illustrated Guide to Anonymous Family Affairs", in which the author Umeda Goji listed many nameless chores that need to be done from morning to night, such as: assembling and putting the dried crisper container and lid back in place, regularly washing the mucus and hair from the drain, looking for another sock when there is only one sock left in the laundry basket, and cleaning up the clutter on the floor before turning on the robot vacuum......

Umeda Goji named these chores one by one, attaching the "time required" and "upset index" of the housework, and found that when they were all done, the day was almost over, and the housework was about to collapse. He believes that these trivial tasks may seem simple, but they are actually "reincarnated hells that multiply infinitely."

At this point, countless "invisible housework" finally became famous, but the people who did it still had no dignity. They are like the small but unpaid "workloads" that countless social animals are crammed into their work, and they are some kind of work that "you don't know if you are the boss, but if you don't do it, it will affect the overall work".

You're forced to tinker because every little bit of work is just a link in the gears, and they're too similar and mechanical to be seen and remembered.

It only takes a few seconds to soak in water, but there are always people who won't remember. (Photo/"We Are Not Kind Enough")

Some invisible chores may still be easy to detect, but there are also some chores hidden deeper, such as "invisible labor" on mobile phones.

Today, high-tech and the Internet allow us to arrange daily affairs more freely, and all daily needs seem to be tied to mobile phones, but this not only does not reduce housework, but is more embedded in life - many women find that their mobile phones are installed with a lot of "housework" software, some of which are naturally linked to housework, and some of which have slowly evolved into part of housework.

First of all, various shopping apps account for the lion's share. Household daily necessities need to be replaced and replenished regularly, and daily consumables will not automatically "grow out", so the shopping cart on women's mobile phones is always stocking up on family-sized things, such as who has significantly fewer clothes at home, and always has to think about going to the online shopping platform to buy the shopping cart that was added before and has recently waited for the price reduction.

In the event of a large-scale consumer festival such as "Double 11" or "6.18", you have to be responsible for shopping around and making up the biggest discounts and full reductions - this is probably called "procurement" in a company, but it is often necessary but unpaid labor in the family.

Many people don't notice how the consumables in the home are replaced. (Photo/"Kim Ji-young born in 82")

For those who need to balance family and career, conceiving recipes, matching dishes, and comparing prices on grocery shopping apps is also a daily chore that is difficult to escape. Some people will also join various "group buying groups" in nearby communities, and their mobile phones ring non-stop every day, just to save a few dollars for their families.

A variety of smart home apps also occupy a full screen,For example, the use of some sweeping robots,Need to model on the App、Set different cleaning modes;The cleaning liquid is out or the machine fails,You have to read the manual on the App,Find a solution。

In addition, if the electrical appliance is broken, you need to make an appointment with a master on the repair app to communicate trivial details, the child needs to sign up for online classes or interest classes, and needs to do research on various parenting apps to ensure that every penny is spent, and before the holidays, you need to book tickets and hotels on the travel app to make a good travel route......

Holiday travel planning is also usually done by women. (Photo/"Kim Ji-young born in 82")

As the scholar Hochschild wrote in a book, "Working Mothers Don't Get Off Work", the concept of a "second shift" was proposed, in which women finally finished their day's work and hurriedly started the next day: "Although they felt equal to each other, the burden of the second shift fell mainly on Carol. It is a social system outside of their stable and happy marriage, greater social support for inequality between the sexes, that indirectly sustains the unequal distribution of housework between 'him' and 'her'. ”

These invisible trivialities are more intine and can imprison one's actions and thoughts. The huge, overly convenient network system means a larger housekeeping system, the stealth housekeeping plus version, which can extend infinitely, like a black hole that no one can explore the end, sucking up countless concrete people.

The modern version of "The Snail Girl",

Hidden in digital chores

Invisible housework often belongs to the "unbearable person" in the family, and it is usually also a woman.

She may be a nagging mother, a wife who suddenly explodes, always running around corners that her family doesn't care about, paying for all "informalities", cleaning up the messes of daily life, and may be misunderstood by others as "clean" and "moody".

They are the ones who know the most about the intricacies of the family, and they are also the ones who are most worried about their husbands and children being "unable to live" because they don't know how to do housework. In the TV series "Please Answer 1988", Ms. Leopard wants to go back to her parents' house to visit her family, and before leaving, she is anxious, explaining how to cook, how to solve the problem when the briquettes are extinguished, and what to do if the toilet is blocked, just like the wife who hangs a flatbread around her husband's neck before going out in folklore, afraid that her husband will starve to death.

A mother who can never go out with peace of mind. (Photo/"Please Answer 1988")

But why is it that at a time when technology products are changing with each passing day and housework carriers have undergone major innovations, the people who take on the invisible housework on mobile phones are still women?

Professor Song Meijie and student Xing Yufang of the School of Communication of Fujian Normal University have written "The "Snail Girl" in the Digital Age: A Study on the Digitalization of Housework and the Invisibility of Women's Labor. They found that among the 13 families interviewed, not only were women the main bearers of the digitalization of traditional housework such as online communication between home and school, online grocery shopping, etc., but also the access and users of some new smart home devices were mainly women.

This is different from the stereotype that digital technology students come from "masculinity". The paper analyzes several reasons: First, the traditional gender concept in mainland China has led to the fact that digital housework is still regarded as a part of household chores as a "women's task". Second, the design, promotion and use of technology is gender-biased, with many products positioned as "women's helpers" tailored to women, or "gifts that men pay for their wives or mothers."

Kim Ji-young suffered a wrist strain because of housework, but the doctor said he was puzzled. (Photo/"Kim Ji-young born in 82")

This is a kind of sadness about modern women - they are equal to men's intelligence and ability, know new technology well, know how to use more scientific and convenient means to solve housework, but because of this, they also happen to fall into the double trap set by contemporary advertisers and traditional concepts, and are even planned to be a kind of capital that can be "showed off": as long as you start with these, you are a new era woman who is at the forefront and has more control over life.

In addition, new technologies have led to a re-division of household chores, and some household tasks traditionally attributed to men, such as cleaning, maintaining, repairing and replacing household equipment, which are physically and technically demanding, may also be transferred to women due to the introduction of housekeeping platforms, and the rejection of new equipment by the elderly group has also led to the transfer of household tasks that were originally undertaken by the elders in the family to the younger women in the family.

Therefore, when you see a woman's home with dishwashers, sweeping robots and other smart home appliances, it does not mean that she can get rid of housework and live lightly, the truth may be the opposite.

Not everything can be washed in the machine, and nothing will be cleaned automatically. (Photo/"Kim Ji-young born in 82")

It is even difficult for them to find complete calm in the face of high-tech products. Even if you know that the washing machine is washing clothes and the dishwasher is washing dishes, your nerves will still hang over those machines, and your ears will be pricked up until you hear the machine chime "work is over" - because the clothes have to be hung up, the bowls have to be taken out, and if they don't work well or malfunction, the "snail girl" will still be the first person to be questioned, and the one who will be the bottom line.

It can be seen that the digitalization of housework has further exacerbated the invisibility of housework, and the collusion between artificial intelligence technology and invisible housework has shaped a new "snail girl" in the digital age. They put in more invisible labor and emotional labor, but they may also be mistaken by their families for "playing with their phones".

The digitization of housework does not mean that housework has disappeared. (Photo/"Kim Ji-young born in 82")

As The Invisible Woman puts it, "Even in this hyper-rational world, in an age increasingly dominated by super-impartial supercomputers, women are still largely what Beauvoir called the second sex – and, as in the past, are still in danger of becoming a subordinate type of male."

Therefore, the narrative of "emancipating women" in a certain product is mostly a trap in the contemporary context, and despite the proliferation of black technology, digital housework is also bringing new burdens to women. If these invisible chores are ignored all the time, it will be difficult for women's plight to be alleviated, and the family space will never be more enjoyable because of "buying one more product".

Love itself can make people not care about trivial matters, but the accumulation of trivial things over time will definitely consume love.

There is an issue of "Crayon Xiaoxin" that mentions the invisible housework that Mei Yan endures every day, and the concept is ahead of her time. (Photo/"Crayon Xiaoxin")

Proofreading: Zou Weiyun

Operations: Ono

Typography: Sweet

Cover: Home on the Ramp

[1] Song Meijie, Xing Yufang."The "Tianluo Girl" in the Digital Age: A Study on the Digitalization of Housework and the Invisibility of Women's Labor[J].China Youth Studies,2024-2

[2] Caroline Cleardo Pérez, The Invisible Woman, Nova Press, 2022-8

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