If being a wife was a paid position, a married woman would earn an average of $120,000 a year, according to a Cal State Long Beach women’s studies class.
The estimated salary was made by students from assistant professor Shira Tarrant’s United States Women and Economy: Money, Sex and Power class who were assigned to find the market rate for a wife. The students posted an advertisement seeking to find the value of a wife on Craigslist.
They made lists of the tasks that a wife usually does on a daily basis, including everything from having children to cooking and cleaning.
“I wanted them to make the list detailed,” Tarrant said. “Instead of simply ‘cooking,’ ‘personal chef’ was what we were looking for.”
Each group presented their lists and their estimated going rate for a wife. The average salary was $120,000.
“It started off as a group project,” Tarrant said. “My class was then saying, ‘Let’s do it for real.’ “
Tarrant agreed, so the class compiled all of their lists and a Craigslist posting went up the next day.
“As a group, we were curious how people would respond,” Tarrant said.
The posting was not asking to hire a wife specifically, because that would be quickly flagged down as inappropriate. The posting simply asked for salary proposals.
“The idea is if you had to pay someone to do all these things, what would it cost?” Tarrant said.
The purpose of the wife project was to bring attention to how domestic work is overlooked and rarely thought of as a contribution to the economy.
“We would be paying a lot of extra money for this work and the economy can’t support it,” said Jenna Burns, a junior psychology major and participant in the project.
After being flagged numerous times and posting the advertisement in other cities like Denver, the class received approximately 25 responses.
Seeing a posting asking for the value of a wife outraged many people, according to Tarrant. She said one responder even assumed the poster was a disgruntled housewife looking for validation.
“It definitely generated interesting conversations,” Tarrant said.
The highest proposal they received was $135,000 a year, with the lowest offer being that the work should be done for free.
“A lot of people basically said that a wife does the work for love, and who can put a price on that?” Tarrant said. “So we won’t.”
Tarrant was surprised by the back-and-forth dialogue and the seriousness of the discussions she and the students had with those who replied to the posting.
“It questions assumptions on gender, work and economy,” Tarrant said.
Unsatisfied by the number of responses she was receiving, Burns changed her posting from a salary proposal to an actual job advertisement.
“By changing it to a job posting, I gave people more room to respond,” Burns said.
Burns listed the responsibilities and noted that the salary offered would be based on experience.
Since reposting last week, Burns has received no responses.
Auria Zahed, a junior psychology major and student in Tarrant’s class, was also intrigued by the experiment.
In Zahed’s group, the wife value was placed at $90,000 a year. But after rethinking that estimate, she says she would now place the value at $200,000 year.
“It’s work that goes unnoticed and is undervalued,” Zahed said.
Burns agrees that the work is undervalued but said she was stumped when asked to
put a price on a wife’s work.
“I would start by adding the salaries of all those people who do all those different jobs and then get the amount based on that,” Burns said.
The advertisement was posted three weeks ago and will probably only run for about another week, according to Tarrant.
Other than the dialogue the post has created, Tarrant said she was mostly excited about how the students took charge in extending the wife project to Craigslist.
“It was entirely student generated,” Tarrant said.