I was going for the gist, not an exhaustive detailing of what most of us already know and/or doesn’t apply to everyone’s particular jobs. Nonetheless, you are absolutely correct in that there’s a LOT unaccounted for in OP’s generalization.
OP created their post 100 years ago when this sentiment was much more radical. The fact that we failed to move our positions further in one hundred years is kinda on us.
I think we need an international strike to reduce working hours (with retained compensation) from 8→6 hours. Could be a good test run for more radical change.
It’s actually gotten worse in the last 100 years. See, back then, most women would do unpaid household labour, and men would work. So your typical married household does 40 hours of work a week.
Nowadays, we have (some) gender equality, which means everyone works 40 hours a week. So your typical married household does 80 hours of paid work a week, PLUS the unpaid work that still needs to be done!
If we want to get back to doing the same work as a society as in 1926, we need to legally mandate a 4 hour workday. Anything less is a regression in workers’ rights.
It’s actually gotten worse in the last 100 years. See, back then, most women would do unpaid household labour, and men would work
This might have been true for someone in a relatively well off class position, but for the majority of working class people 100 years ago, the women also worked. Especially in things like service and textiles.
It wasn’t until the post-war economic boom with soldiers coming home and taking advantage of the GI Bill, did the “traditional” setup of women being stay-at-home mothers while the man worked, become normative. At least among white families.
People also often lived much closer to their work so commuting was just walking down the street a short ways. It wasn’t until cars became common that the sprawl and long commutes started.
Somewhat, yes - reliable public transit was also still incredibly common into WWII (and beyond in some major metros). Even if your job was downtown and you were living outside the core, you could reliably expect bus or train service within a block or two of your house, and a reliable enough network with enough stops to let you walk to your office or whatever with fair ease.
I was going for the gist, not an exhaustive detailing of what most of us already know and/or doesn’t apply to everyone’s particular jobs. Nonetheless, you are absolutely correct in that there’s a LOT unaccounted for in OP’s generalization.
OP created their post 100 years ago when this sentiment was much more radical. The fact that we failed to move our positions further in one hundred years is kinda on us.
I think we need an international strike to reduce working hours (with retained compensation) from 8→6 hours. Could be a good test run for more radical change.
It’s actually gotten worse in the last 100 years. See, back then, most women would do unpaid household labour, and men would work. So your typical married household does 40 hours of work a week.
Nowadays, we have (some) gender equality, which means everyone works 40 hours a week. So your typical married household does 80 hours of paid work a week, PLUS the unpaid work that still needs to be done!
If we want to get back to doing the same work as a society as in 1926, we need to legally mandate a 4 hour workday. Anything less is a regression in workers’ rights.
This is a very important point. We doubled the amount of labor, but the wealth of households stayed flat.
This might have been true for someone in a relatively well off class position, but for the majority of working class people 100 years ago, the women also worked. Especially in things like service and textiles.
It wasn’t until the post-war economic boom with soldiers coming home and taking advantage of the GI Bill, did the “traditional” setup of women being stay-at-home mothers while the man worked, become normative. At least among white families.
People also often lived much closer to their work so commuting was just walking down the street a short ways. It wasn’t until cars became common that the sprawl and long commutes started.
Somewhat, yes - reliable public transit was also still incredibly common into WWII (and beyond in some major metros). Even if your job was downtown and you were living outside the core, you could reliably expect bus or train service within a block or two of your house, and a reliable enough network with enough stops to let you walk to your office or whatever with fair ease.