Housewife

A housewife is a woman whose main occupation is running or managing her family's home—caring for and educating her children, cooking and storing food, buying goods the family needs in day-to-day life, cleaning and maintaining the home, making clothes for the family, etc.—and who is generally not employed outside the home. Merriam Webster describes a housewife as a married woman who is in charge of her household. The British Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (1901) defined a housewife as: "the mistress of a household; a female domestic manager; a pocket sewing kit".

The related term homemaker has almost the same meaning but is not limited to women and does not connote marriage.

Sociology and economics

Some feminists and non-feminist economists (particularly proponents of historical materialism) note that the value of housewives' work is ignored in standard formulations of economic output, such as GDP or employment figures. Housewives work many unrecorded hours a week, while depending for money on their husband's or partner's employment.

Housewife (film)

Housewife is a 1934 American drama film directed by Alfred E. Green. The screenplay by Manuel Seff and Lillie Hayward is based on a story by Hayward and Robert Lord.

Plot

Nan Reynolds (Ann Dvorak) struggles to run the household on her meek husband Bill's (George Brent) meager salary as an office manager. She urges him to apply for better jobs elsewhere, but he is disinclined to take risks, and his lack of ambition is placing a strain on their marriage.

Pat Berkeley (Bette Davis), who attended high school with Nan and Bill, is hired by his firm as an advertising copywriter, and her success prompts Nan to coerce her husband into asserting himself with his boss. When he fails to spark any interest with his ideas, Bill succumbs to his wife's suggestion that he start his own agency using the money she has managed to save. Spurred by Nan, he steals a major client from his former firm and hires Pat to help him handle it. Complications arise when the feelings the two had for each other years before are reignited and they embark upon an affair. Nan becomes aware of their relationship but chooses to ignore it.

Housewife (The Cribs song)

'Housewife' arrived in August 2010 as a one-off release, and their fourth single overall, by the four-piece incarnation of British indie rock band The Cribs. On 9 August 2010, BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe announced during his show that he would play a brand new song that night, something previously hinted at on the official band website several days previously. The release took fans and critics by surprise due to the secretive nature of the release.

Physical release

Recorded at West Heath Studios, London by Ryan with assistance from frequent collaborator Edwyn Collins, John O'Mahony mixed the song at Sunset Sound Factory, Hollywood, California. The vinyl received the catalogue number 'WEBB271S'. A traditional set-up for the band, except with Ryan providing work on organ.

Etching and poem

Unlike the majority of Cribs releases, the 7" vinyl featured no b-side. Instead, an etching appeared with the words 'SCAM', in addition to a message on the run-out groove stating 'insert me into your computer for additional content'. A poem, containing allusions to the song, appears on the back cover. The cover art featured Ryan and Gary dressed as the title of the single suggests, shot by Pat Graham, with the sleeve designed by Nick Scott, receiving assistance by Owen Richards, Corrado and Nell Frizzell.

Woman

A woman is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent. The term woman is also sometimes used to identify a female human, regardless of age, as in phrases such as "women's rights". "Woman" may also refer to a person's gender identity. Women with typical genetic development are usually capable of giving birth from puberty until menopause. In the context of gender identity, transgender people who are biologically determined to be male and identify as women cannot give birth. Some intersex people who identify as women cannot give birth due to either sterility or inheriting one or more Y chromosomes. In extremely rare cases, people who have Swyer syndrome can give birth with medical assistance. Throughout history women have assumed or been assigned various social roles.

Etymology

The spelling of woman in English has progressed over the past millennium from wīfmann to wīmmann to wumman, and finally, the modern spelling woman. In Old English, wīfmann meant "female human", whereas wēr meant "male human". Mann or monn had a gender-neutral meaning of "human", corresponding to Modern English "person" or "someone"; however, subsequent to the Norman Conquest, man began to be used more in reference to "male human", and by the late 13th century had begun to eclipse usage of the older term wēr. The medial labial consonants f and m in wīfmann coalesced into the modern form "woman", while the initial element, which meant "female", underwent semantic narrowing to the sense of a married woman ("wife"). It is a popular misconception that the term "woman" is etymologically connected with "womb", which is from a separate Old English word, wambe meaning "stomach" (of male or female; modern German retains the colloquial term "Wampe" from Middle High German for "potbelly"). Nevertheless, such a false derivation of "woman" has appeared in print.

Women (novel)

Women is a 1978 novel written by Charles Bukowski, starring his semi-autobiographical character Henry Chinaski. In contrast to Factotum, Post Office and Ham on Rye, Women is centered on Chinaski's later life, as a celebrated poet and writer, not as a dead-end lowlife. It does, however, feature the same constant carousel of women with whom Chinaski only finds temporary fulfillment.

Plot

Women focuses on the many dissatisfactions Chinaski faced with each new woman he encountered. One of the women featured in the book is a character named Lydia Vance; she is based on Bukowski's one-time girlfriend, the sculptress and sometime poet Linda King. Another central female character in the book is named "Tanya" who is described as a 'tiny girl-child' and Chinaski's pen-pal. They have a weekend tryst. The real-life counterpart to this character wrote a self-published chapbook about the affair entitled "Blowing My Hero" under the pseudonym Amber O'Neil. The washed-up folksinger "Dinky Summers" is based on Bob Lind.

Women (album)

Women is the debut album by Calgary band Women, recorded by fellow Calgary-native Chad VanGaalen. It was released in 2008 on VanGaalen's Flemish Eye record label in Canada, and on Jagjaguwar in the US. The song "Sag Harbour Song" is a direct reference to the suicide of the artist Ray Johnson, like "Locust Valley" and "Venice Lockjaw" on Women's second album of 2010, Public Strain.

Recording

Women was recorded by Polaris Music Prize-nominated Chad VanGaalen, in "[VanGaalen's] basement, an outdoor culvert and a crawlspace." It was recorded using boom boxes and tape machines, contributing to its lo-fi sound.

Reception

Women was released to favourable reviews, with Cokemachineglow naming it as "the best 'indie rock' record released [in 2008], hands down."

Track listing

References

External links