I am so very tired of the dismissive narrative “everyone has the same 24 hours” because it's ableist, classist, racist, and misleading. Yes everyone has the same 24 hours under the sun, but not everyone has the privilege of not using all of those hours. Not everyone has the privilege of taking those hours from someone else.
To make it easier, we are going to say that every person has 53 free hours a week. 24*7 minus 16 hrs a day for work and sleep and 3 hours to run miscellaneous errands.
Let me give you an example of your average slightly upper middle class family in America today. Kevin and Becky have three children in private school and a nanny/household manager (me). Kevin and Becky have to be at work by 8 am so I show up at 730 to help get the children off to school. I then spent half my shift as a household manager (I worked 3 days a week)
laundry for 5 people 3 days a week: 7 hours (that's just gathering, sorting, folding, and putting away. They never rewore anything- even kids pajamas put on after bath and taken off in the morning. Had to be washed)
dishes 3 hour total
meal prep: 3 hours
grocery shopping: 4 hours (they paid for delivery twice a week)
pick kids up from school and take to after school activities: 6 hours
playroom cleanup and baths before dinner 3 hour
pool cleaner 1 hours
landscaping service 1 hours
cleaning crew 2 hours
This comes to an average of 30 hours a week that they take of other people's hours while they're at work, not using any of their “free hours”. That's 30 extra hours a week for them to go to the gym, relax, have date night, etc. Now they have 83 usable hours that week. All they have to do when they get home is cook the meal prepped, load the dishwasher, and put the kids to bed. Hours of free time all weekend because the laundry is done, etc.
And given that they have the privileges and resources to own and maintain a nice home in a nice subdivision, put their kids in private school, and to contract out all of these different jobs, do you think that they paid fairly or treated us well? You would think so. But this is the same family that attempted to not pay me for a week, attempted to unilaterally cancel our working contract, and lied to unemployment in ways that attack my professionalism to get out of having to pay me after they fired me for taking a sick day. Just a month before that, I was being told how I'm “family" 🙄.
Meanwhile I was going home to my own unfinished laundry and own home that needs to be cleaned as does every other person that they hired. Let's look at how many hours that get taken out of the 53 free hours I have per week
4.5 just to commute
20 for disability (in a good week. 30 in a bad one)
8 hours for laundry for a family of 3
6 for dishes
I've used up 38 to 48 of my hours and I haven't cleaned my house, gotten groceries, cooked, spent any time with my family, relaxed, etc. I have 8- 15 hours in a week to do 14 hours of chores. By this metric I actually go into negative if my disabilities flare up. That means undone laundry, dirty house, raiding whatever is in the pantry to throw together a meal or paying 50% more to have something delivered- and keep in mind my income is their disposable income. All the money that I have to run these errands, buy these groceries, take care of my disabilities, etc comes from their discretionary spending.
If you're disabled, you have fewer hours. If you're a POC you have fewer hours because you're not getting paid enough (or even interviewed for jobs that do) because of systemic racism. If you're a woman, you have fewer hours due to the percentage of hetero couples with an uneven workload at home and the pay discrepancy. If you don't make enough to pay others to do the work, you have fewer hours.
The only people claiming everyone has the same 24 hours are the ones who don't have those hours taken from them. Who have the privilege to underpay others for extra hours.
We are not the same and you don't get to gaslight us anymore.
So very true!