BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: All Work and No Pay: A History of Women's Invisible Labor

DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: All Work and No Pay: A History of Women's Invisible Labor:

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Description of Pictures: All Work and No Pay: A History of Women's Invisible Labor
March 4, 2019 – February 2020
Explore the history of women’s work in the home and the value and implications of unwaged labor. Despite making steps forward in the paid labor force, there is an implied and historical expectation that women will take care of the housework and unpaid work at home. Costumes meant for domestic work from colonial America to the 1990s and objects from various ethnic communities and classes highlight how women shared similar tasks across race and class despite the complicated dynamics and inequalities between them.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. WORK_190312_005.JPG: "All Work No Pay"
2. WORK_190312_008.JPG: American women have always worked, but their work in the home is often unpaid and invisible. One way to see this work is through what women wore. This labor -- cleaning, cooking, child rearing, and other care work -- fused with notions of what it meant to be a woman and shaped Americans' ideas about work, gender, and clothing. Seeing women as unpaid laborers has had lasting economic and social consequences. It often led to lower wages for women and to the enduring sentiment that much invisible, unpaid care work was and is still "women's work."
3. WORK_190312_012.JPG: Your Mother Doesn't Work Here! Clean up after yourself!
4. WORK_190312_018.JPG: Why do Americans think mothers do the cleaning? Moms would even clean an office, if they worked there. But, absent a mother, office workers and Americans at large must clean up after themselves.
5. WORK_190312_024.JPG: The Good Wife Early 1800s
6. WORK_190312_032.JPG: Home was the Workplace In early America, although certain household tasks were divided by gender, the home was a site of work for both sexes -- and no one "got paid." Your pay was your dinner and the clothes on your back. Home was a place of production.
7. WORK_190312_036.JPG: Two Pockets, 1700s Although one is plain and the other fancy, all pockets made work around the home easier. Pockets allowed women to carry on their person items such as scissors, small knives, and thimbles. Big pockets continued to define women's housedresses for the next two centuries because they were practical.
8. WORK_190312_040.JPG: "The Sphere of Woman," 1850 An idealized images shows mothers as the "angel of the house." It looks so easy: a mother at leisure -- or is it work? -- surrounded by happy, docile children playing quietly.
9. WORK_190312_043.JPG: Short Gown, around 1790 A woman's housedress of the 1700s was a short gown, a simple garment. It allowed enough freedom of movement to accommodate everything from stirring a pot to carrying firewood to picking up children. All kinds of women wore this garment, from free women of middling status to enslaved women. Notice that this is an easy on-and-off garment that could be pined closed or held closed by an apron. Its flexible size allowed it to be enlarged as a woman's body changed with pregnancy.
10. WORK_190312_055.JPG: New Women, Old Work
11. WORK_190312_058.JPG: Chatelaine, 1890-1905 When you think of ball and chain, you may not think of something this fancy. A chatelaine can refer to a woman in charge of a house, or to this decorative yet heavy set of tools that dangled from her waist. What household tasks would the chatelaine help a woman do?
12. WORK_190312_068.JPG: Out to Work
13. WORK_190312_071.JPG: Turning Gender Roles Inside Out
14. WORK_190312_075.JPG: Apron, around 1880 This apron, at once silly and serious, poked fun at the "trouble" that came with marriage, which included domestic and emotional work. "Needles and pins, needles and pins, When we get married, Our trouble begins."
15. WORK_190312_080.JPG: Frank Alfred Humphrey, 1851 Little Frank Alfred Humphrey is seen here sporting his sugar sack pants.
16. WORK_190312_084.JPG: Homemade pants, 1851-1852 Three-year-old Frank Humphrey's pants were homemade out of a sugar sack. There were probably sewn by his mother, perhaps as she kept one eye on him.
17. WORK_190312_090.JPG: Turning Unpaid Into Paid Work 1920s-1940s
18. WORK_190312_097.JPG: Domestic Training, 1930s
19. WORK_190312_100.JPG: "[Black women] carried the double burden of wage labor and housework -- a double burden which always demands that working women possess the persevering powers of Sisyphus." -- Angela Davis, 1981
20. WORK_190312_107.JPG: Streamlined Electric Iron, 1946 Advertisers and home economists told women that electricity would make their tasks a breeze. But electric irons raised standards, and ironing still took hours of hot, repetitive work.
21. WORK_190312_115.JPG: "Washday Secrets" Ad for Rinso, 1932
22. WORK_190312_126.JPG: "The Case of the Scrub-Board Drudge," 1938 A whole host of people agreed that appliances would reduce housework. But that extra time was mostly filled with "more work for mother." Notice the woman using her time productively to knit while the machine washes the clothes. Also notice that the man gets the credit for inventing electricity.
23. WORK_190312_130.JPG: Pattern-sewn dress, 1930s Although out-of-work men were around more, the Great Depression had little effect on domestic labor in the home, or on the clothing women wore to perform it. A woman could get the pattern for this simple housedress from the federal government's Works Progress Administration and make it herself. She could also get one ready-made through federal assistance. Notice the generous pockets and the button-down bodice. These features make this a practical garment.
24. WORK_190312_141.JPG: Nelly Don Factory, around 1940
25. WORK_190312_145.JPG: Nelly Don Dress, 1940s The jaunty gingham, darts, and belt made this dress shapely and stylish. This is no frumpy frock.
26. WORK_190312_147.JPG: Nell Donnelly Reed, around 1920 In 1916, Nell Donnelly designed a new kind of housedress -- one with flair. So many women were willing to pay a bit more for a stylish housedress that she opened a factory. By the early years of the Great Depression, the Donnelly Garment Company employed over 1,000 workers and had sales in the millions.
27. WORK_190312_152.JPG: The Second Shift 1960s-1990s
28. WORK_190312_156.JPG: Pamphlet for International Wages for Housework Campaign, 1976-1978
29. WORK_190312_163.JPG: Mom's taxi, around 1955
30. WORK_190312_167.JPG: Harder Family with Their Ford, Pasadena, California, 1955
31. WORK_190312_174.JPG: Mother's Helper Game, 1968 A mother's work is never done, and even little helped must be managed. Father must be out doing paid work.
32. WORK_190312_178.JPG: Wages for Housework Tea Towel, 1977 The dainty tea towel makes a powerful statement.
33. WORK_190312_183.JPG: "My Wife Doesn't Work," around 1965
34. WORK_190312_188.JPG: Pamphlets from International Wages for Housework Campaign, 1976-1978
35. WORK_190312_194.JPG: Women Demand Compensation
36. WORK_190312_198.JPG: Apron, around 1950 What do you think this cutesy apron is saying about housework? About women?
37. WORK_190312_207.JPG: Yoga pants, the new housedress, 2018 The era of the housedress is over, but women still wear comfortable, wash-and-wear clothes when doing housework.
38. WORK_190312_209.JPG: Where are we now?
39. WORK_190312_217.JPG: Buttons from Wages for Housework Movement, 1970s
40. WORK_190312_222.JPG: "My mom put herself through nursing school with two young kids, and never missed a beat with housework, holidays, or keeping us on tract at school." -- Rebecca Kokinda, 2018
41. WORK_190312_225.JPG: "They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work." -- Silvia Federici, 1975
42. WORK_190312_227.JPG: "I go to work, and then come home and cook. But whether I work or not, Ray expects his meals on the table." -- Anita Judson, around 1989
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2019 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Trips this year: a four-day jaunt to Massachusetts (Boston, Stockbridge, and Springfield) to experience rain in another state, Asheville, NC to visit Dad and his wife Dixie, four trips to New York City (including the United Nations, Flushing, and the New York Comic-Con), and my 14th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con (including sites in Utah). Number of photos taken this year: about 582,000.
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