Women\'s Work Man Works From

Women's Work man works from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done.

My grandmother used to say that. She embroidered pillow shams for my bed. On one pillow it said, "I slept and dreamt that life was beauty." On the other it said, "I woke and found that life was duty." Gra'ma baked pies every morning and sold them for $2 apiece, a handsome sum in those days, and always kept "pick-up work" on a table by her chair. Usually, this was crochet, which she could pick up and work on when she sat down to rest. As Martha Ward (2003) points out in a World Full of Women, all women work. Sometimes, they get paid, but more often they do not. Ward describes women's work as falling into four categories: production, reproduction, status enhancement, and morale building. This essay will explore these kinds of work as found in Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, a memoir written by Fatima Mernissi about the Morracan domestic harem in which she grew up and the lives of the women who lived there.

Production is often paid work. It is work that generates income. Traditionally, women's production work has been considered secondary to the "real work" of men. Cottage industries (like my grandmother's pies) are a good example of women's production. In Dreams of Trespass the author states that the gatekeeper's wife Luza "went to work. She was a first-rate cook and accepted occasional assignments outside our home when the money was good" (p. 21). However, the writer's aunt explained that only poor women took paid work. A "respectable" man provided a home for his wives so they did not have to go into the streets and be exposed to the dangers of the world. A woman doing production work was fairly rare for those living in the harem where Fatima lived (and not socially approved). As Yasmina, the writer's grandmother who lived in the country, explained, "both men and women worked from dawn until very late at night. But men made money and women did not" (p. 63). In other words men were involved with production; women usually did other kinds of work.

More often than not, women are the ones who do reproductive work. Reproductive work begins with having babies and raising children. When Fatima's mother consulted Grandmother Yasmina for advice on how to make Fatima more assertive, Yasmina advised her to help the girl "develop a protective attitude toward the younger children." She further explains, "There are ways to create a strong personality...one of them is to develop the capacity to feel responsible for others" (p. 10). This conversation is an example of the two women's reproductive work -- that is, to raise a child who will be strong. Reproductive work is not limited to children but extends to all the work of the household, such as cleaning ("the young women of the family...liked to clean the courtyard floor," p. 6), gardening, sewing and needlework, and caring for the sick, elderly, or disabled. While on a picnic, for example, the women go in the woods and collect herbs to make cosmetics. Household tasks "were performed according to a strict rotation system. Women organized themselves into small teams formed along friendship and interest lines, and split the chores among them" (p. 69).

Fatima describes the women's gardens. The men's garden was quiet and formal. But in the women's garden, "each co-wife claimed her own little plot of land which she declared to be her garden, where she raised vegetables, hens, ducks, and peacocks" (p. 50). The women's gardens bustled with activity. Gardening was the favorite work of Fatima's grandmother, Yasmina, whose apartment was simple because she didn't "care about all that, as long as she could...have enough space to experiment with trees and flowers, and raise all kinds of ducks and peacocks" (p. 50) Yasmina also "took care of Tamou when she was sick..." Tamou had a nervous breakdown (actually, post-stress disorder) after her family was killed in the war. Yasmina "cared for her for months until she recovered" (p. 52).

The work of status enhancement is work invariably done by women, which involves putting on a show for others that builds and maintains the status of the man who "owns" her and helps his career advance.

It includes things like volunteer work, arranging dinner parties, and organizing charity events. In the harem the #1 wife, usually from a rich family, lived more opulently and conspicuously than the other wives who were from more humble beginnings. In the city harem where the writer lived, Lali Mani was this person. She was excused from household duties. Her salon was "furnished with silk brocade-covered sofas and cushions running along all four walls; a huge central mirror reflecting the inside of the gate door and its carefully studied draperies; and a pale, flowered carpet which completely covered the floor" (p. 6). Lali Mani wanted respect and "to sit elegantly dressed in her bejeweled headdress, and look silently out into the courtyard" (p. 7). Being a status symbol is a form of this kind of work.