“Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first. But its success means that it further devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving, by continuing to enforce the idea that only making things is valuable.”
– DEBBIE CHACHRA
I talked about this with my discussion group on Thursday a bit, but this article in general stuck out to me quite a bit. Part of the reason it’s strange is that I’d rarely thought about these issues before, yet they ring true. The divide between “makers” and “caregivers” (to use the author’s terms) isn’t one I had always thought of as so strictly gendered. Certainly the stereotype of female-as-caregiver exists, but male as maker? Not something I think of often, especially given that I’m a woman who “makes”.
The one place I had engaged with this topic before was in the WGST class I took a few terms ago, where we discussed the value placed on different kinds of work. For example, you can look at what jobs get paid and for how much. Often cleaning and childcare, two traditionally “female” domains, are low paying or unpaid jobs, especially when done by a traditional “one partner works one partner stays at home” family unit. Applying the framework of maker versus caregiver to this idea seems like a logical extension into the world of Digital Humanities.
Quite frankly, I’ve always seen maintenance (my preferred word for “caregiving”) as a more difficult task than making. With the latter, you have a solid goal and endpoint in mind; once you finish the creation you’re done. When you perform maintenance, you do so knowing it’s a temporary accomplishment. Whatever you’re working on will likely require maintenance again, or even requires it on a regular basis. In conclusion, while I’ve always known on some level that maintenance is a more thankless task than making, the gendered aspect of this analysis both stuck out to me, and rung as true.
Side note: what was with the random Rand thing in the middle of the article? Completely destroyed the flow of the piece.
