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Why AI is not much more than an upgraded washing machine
Domestic machinery was supposed to free the average woman in the West from housework, advancing gender equality with the gift of time. While in some ways this did — arguably — occur, expecting a washing machine or a dishwasher or a vacuum cleaner to resolve years of socialized norms and economic inequality is, research shows, a bit naive — though a great basis for a marketing campaign. Not since cigarettes have advertisers been so anxious to be on the woman’s side.
But the domestic machinery debate is about more than gender, much as I’d love to blame my spouse for his general indifference towards our domicile’s hygiene. Women with newly freed time were expected to go to ‘work,’ to produce a profit with the time that they had once used to ‘simply’ maintain profit’s perks. Sometimes this meant that women could demand a salary for work that they had, in earlier times, completed at no charge, but the history of the care industry demonstrates that this is a ‘charged’ assumption.
Much of what has emerged in research shows that the care economy (critically, not the healthcare economy) sprang from slavery and other forms of exploitation. There are structural and historical reasons we undervalue professions associated with domesticity, and these issues remain unresolved. From concerns about maternity care to abortion to whether a…
