Valuing Housework

Nineteenth-Century Anxieties About the Commodification of Domestic Labor

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3757872
AutoresReva B Siegel (0009-0004-1163-7952, Yale Law School), Reva Siegel (Yale University, autor correspondente)
Ano1998
Volume41
Fascículo10
Páginas1437-1451
Data de publicação1998-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0002764298041010005
OpenAlexW2001617414
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas21

This article explores the role that law has played in insulating wives' household labor from market exchange. During the 19th century, the feminist movement challenged giving a husband property rights in his wife's labor and argued that wives were entitled to rights in labor they performed in and out of the household. Legislatures and courts ultimately granted wives rights in labor performed for third parties but refused to countenance any arrangement that would give a married woman rights in the labor performed for her husband or family. In particular, courts refused (and still refuse to this day) to enforce spousal agreements compensating wives for the performance of household labor. In reforming the law of marriage, legislatures and courts struggled to distinguish between market and family relations. In so doing, they imposed legal boundaries on the labor market and defined the economic structure of family transactions for the industrial era

Domestic relations · Economics · Family law · Labor relations · Labour economics · Labour law · Legislature · Political science · Property rights · Secondary labor market · Sociology · Split labor market theory · Wife · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law