There is burgeoning discourse online surrounding the traditional wife archetype, commonly known as the “trad wife”. This phenomenon is manifesting as an internet trend where young heterosexual women romanticise the work of stay-at-home mothers, who spend their days making elaborate meals dressed in ostentatious outfits. The ‘trad wife’ is a perfectly coiffed influencer who lives in a mansion, has leisure time beyond your imagination and earns money from her platform. She is compliant and tireless, elegant in all ways and submissive to her upstanding husband. She is never on record doing actual manual labor cleaning toilets, mopping the floors and the like. Instead, she usually hires a ‘wife’ of her own in the form of a domestic worker,  to handle the dirty work. The “wife of the wife” or domestic  worker – also known as the house help or house girl, sometimes my girl – is often young, overworked, and underpaid and in some middle-class families, may even wear a uniform to make the class divide more apparent.

It need not be said that this “wife of the wife” domestic worker enjoys neither the sought-after luxury that a ‘trad-wife’ flaunts, nor the healthy affection that being one’s wife supposedly comes with.

Content creators of this trend also often speak against women’s formal employment, misdirecting capitalist exploitation to be the fault of the feminists who came before them and fought for their right to work. This narrative distorts historical realities, particularly of Black women and other women of colour, who worked outside of their homes (for wives for their slave masters) long before women were allowed to work. It also neglects to acknowledge financial agency and other individual and collective freedoms that women sought in advocating for the right to work outside the home. Within the earliest labour movements, women were campaigning against pay discrimination, sexual harassment, exclusion from certain fields, and denial of access to reproductive health care; issues which we are still fighting for to this day. 

‘Trad wife’ trend not only works to undermine our collective struggle, it is also dishonest. In depicting women as living their best lives at home, the co-opted shorthand form is a paradox to the reality of many a traditional wife who performs long hours of a disproportionate amount of unpaid, certainly not-glamorous, household labor as imposed by gender and sex roles in a patriarchal marriage.

As part of  our feminist resistance to sexism and sexist exploitation, it’s essential to consider the different identities in which women exist; and how significantly the experiences of each identity vary.  A crucial part of organising towards fair labor policies for women in the workplace, for example, it equally crucial to acknowledge and address the unique struggles faced by domestic workers. These women often belong to marginalized communities and face financial exploitation, low wages, lack of job security, and sexual harassment, among other atrocities. In the fight for gender equality, it is vital to amplify the voices of domestic workers and advocate for their rights.

To unpack this issue, these are some of the discussions we held at Feminist Church in February. Our text for the service was bell hooks’ seminal book “Where we stand: Class Matters”. This text was picked to encourage us to interrogate our own class privilege, examine how we perpetuate class division in our communities and explore avenues for class solidarity.

We found hooks’ exploration in this work relevant to this day; the chapter on “Feminism and Class Power” prompted us to scrutinise the motivations behind our feminist identification, ensuring that they align with feminist politics. 

We discussed the neglect of struggles of lower-class women in our work, noting that many times even well-meaning feminists and women’s rights advocates speak over lower-class women and seek solely to “empower” them, ignoring these women’s  own strategies for liberation or communities of resistance. Instead of serving our own savior complex, we should learn from them and inspire each other’s struggles. By understanding and incorporating issues faced by women from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds into feminist discourse, we can create a more inclusive movement that caters to all our needs.

In another chapter “Class and Race: the New Black Elite”, hooks criticizes the thriving, corrupt, ‘talented tenth’ who preach individual liberalism and black capitalism and tout the notion  that the economic plight of the black masses is caused by a lack of skills, will, and know-how and not by systemic exploitation and oppression. She prompts us to question the voices we amplify and the underprivileged voices we may inadvertently side line. In our society, it is common for relative privilege to fool people into false class solidarity with billionaires. Instead, we should see our own positionality clearly as merely workers under capitalism and stand in solidarity with other workers, including domestic workers. Under a larger labor movement, we can advocate for fair remuneration, adequate time off, and reasonable accommodation for disability and chronic illness, among other essential considerations.

In both chapters, hooks emphasizes that class is not simply a question of money. Quoting Rita Mae Brown, hooks points out that the Marxist definition of class: relation to the means of production is insufficient. Class also includes “your behavior, your basic assumptions, how you are taught to behave, what you expect from yourself and from others, your concept of a future, how you understand problems and solve them, how you think, feel, act.” In our own society, class hierarchies are often perpetuated through education and professionalism, which translates to gatekeeping of academic and other workspaces from lower class people who may not be able to afford the polish and shine. Women are encouraged to see the economic gains of affluent women as a positive sign for all women even when those same women compromise the very progress feminists fought for. 

Thankfully, hooks shares a roadmap for those who have always had or have gained class power to exercise it without betraying those without class privilege. She shares some of the strategies taken on by herself and her comrades; “living simply, sharing our resources, and refusing to engage in hedonistic consumerism and the politics of greed.” As a collective, we found this advice useful for our own lives. Participating in mutual aid is also key because we agree that the redistribution of wealth is both an African and feminist principle, challenging the notion that giving is solely the prerogative of the rich. This is the essence of community care: embracing diversity, challenging class structures, and advocating for collective liberation.

This conversation serves as a call to action, encouraging us to reassess our class privilege and actively participate in the dismantling of all oppressive systems. In bell hooks’ words, “Our fates are intertwined,” and it is only through collective efforts that we can truly progress towards a more inclusive and equitable future.

Vivienne Kabarungi