WASHINGTON — "All Work, No Pay: A History of Women's Invisible Labor" is a conversation-sparking exhibit at The National Museum of American History. It starts with aprons and house dresses, and ends with a modern-day house dress of sorts: yoga pants.
"There is a historical relationship between unpaid work and the lower wages that women often receive in the workplace," Kathleen Franz, chair and curator, Division of Work and Industry, said.
The new displays delves into the subject of unpaid work and explores topics in three sections.
- "Separations Home and Work," which identifies the changing perspective of gender roles and work in early America.
- "Making Unpaid into Paid Work," gains in the paid workforce against the continuation of unpaid work in the home from the 1890-1940s.
- "The Second Shift," in which the unspoken expectation of housekeeping continues despite progress in women's rights from the 1960s through the 1990s.
If you'd like to be apart of the conversation, on occasion, curators will staff the conversation table to record and preserve oral histories about housework for the museum's permanent collection.
