The Return of the Housewife: Why Women are Still Cleaning Up
Emma Casey, Manchester University Press, £19.98

EMMA CASEY’s book, The Return of the Housewife, exposes yet another example of how social media is being used to misinform and manipulate.

A reader in sociology at the University of York, Casey strips bare TikTok, Instagram, other digital sources flooded with images of “cleanfluencers” — women cleaning, tidying, putting things right, and linked to the concept of a life of love, contentment, self-care and positive thinking.

Yet the truth is, the world of the “cleanfluencers” — ie, housework — is crammed full of inequalities. All over the world, “domestic” labour is low-paid and for the homemaker, there is no pay at all.  

This book ignites the debate on domestic inequalities. Drawing on decades of sociological and feminist thinking, Casey looks critically, but often with humour, at the attempts to digitally reglamourise the housewife. For example: check out the clip from Disney’s classic film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, found online, where the three fairy Godmothers use their wands to magically clean up the mess in the kitchen. 

The book exposes how maintaining the concept of housewifery (11th century Old English, Huse- house / wif- woman) is an essential ingredient of the capitalist supply chain. Big name global cleaning companies work online with the “cleanfluencers” to market their products. Many of these products we are encouraged to use are made in sweatshops and factories in the global South, often carrying significant ecological damage in the process. Yet cleaning products are promoted as offering a joyful experience.  

So, is housewifery really women’s work? Social media is part of a growing trend of gender stereotyping, brainwashing people not to question, but instead to keep our surroundings clean, calm, well ordered, especially in moments of crisis like those caused by austerity, rather than there being a shared commitment to change.

Casey explores both why these inequalities matter and why they still persist after a century of advancement in women’s rights. In Iceland every year, the country reflects upon and celebrates the one-day women’s strikes held in 1974 and 2023 that included not just the workplace, but withdrawal from any housework. In 1974, virtually all Icelandic women took part in the strike, an act of solidarity which led to significant social shifts and inspired action elsewhere. 

So many women today are constantly having to cope with the balance between domestic femininity, gender acceptability and participation in high-status work. This book argues that the real solution lies in a reframing of debates pertaining to inequalities around domestic labour that recognise its necessity, value and importance, and in doing so, offers radical opportunities for new, equal divisions of housework. 

I’ve noticed lots of the birds who inhabit our gardens, both cocks and hens equally share feeding the chicks, constructing the nest, keeping it clean and tidy. We could learn a lot from the wildlife around us.

This book looks critically at the ways reglamourising housework using the powerful influence of social media has helped to distort the wider processes ensuring continued exploitation of unpaid, or in the commercial workplace, low-paid, labour. 

To conclude, Casey considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework — cultural perceptions and stereotypes of women as natural arbiters of the domestic space have always been accompanied by the persistence of gender-linked inequalities. However, on the cover of this book, the hand inside a large, pink, rubber glove is giving the viewer the one finger up. 

Those of you who have spent hours at the kitchen sink will know exactly what Casey is talking about and will find her book a fascinating read.