It’s “Natural”
For most of my life, I’ve been told what is “naturally feminine.” Everything from the natural ability to nurture children to the natural ability to cook meals well and to read other people’s minds. Part of this is the way that we sort people by their genitalia (which never made any sense to me as a kid and doesn’t now as an adult either—like why would people with certain genitalia be better at tasks completely unrelated to the genitalia?). But part of it is also an insistence on not acknowledging the value of tasks that are given to women.
If it’s a female-designated task, it’s “natural.” It’s not the result of hard work and study. It’s not a skill. It’s natural. And when it’s natural for you to do a thing, then you don’t have to be compensated to do it. It is, instead, “rude” and “unnatural” for you to “withhold” doing those tasks for other people (mostly men, but also children and sometimes even other women).
But of course, cooking meals is not a “natural” skill. It’s something that is learned, often by girls from their mothers, but not necessarily. Plenty of women learn cooking skills the same way we all learn anything these days: by watching YouTube videos (by content creators who are paid for their expertise, regardless of their gender). And yet, in a typical heteronormative household, a wife will be told it is her “natural” ability to cook dinner that means that whether or not she is working a full-time job outside the home, she should come home and cook dinner for her husband and/or children because it is “natural” for her to have those skills and also “natural” for her to enjoy doing this labor. And if you enjoy doing something, everyone knows that you don’t also need to get paid for it.
Its “natural” for women to do a lot of emotional labor, as well. This is what I mean by “mind reading,” but it includes things other than guessing at what other people want and doing it before they have to ask for it. Because, of course, that is labor. The watching for people’s body language is labor. The guessing is labor. The understanding of complex social rules is labor. The time spent doing the task after guessing at what task is to be done is labor. And the assuring other people that the task done is “nothing” is—you guessed it!—more emotional labor for women that is supposed to be “natural.”
Tasks assigned to women aren’t “natural” at all. They are learned. And they take time and effort. Just like masculine tasks like fixing a car or balancing a budget (if this is masculine) or playing a sportsball game are all learned tasks, probably from a father or other male, but nonetheless. No one pretends that masculine-coded tasks are “natural” and therefore not deserving of pay, reward, or some praise. But feminine coded tasks are different.
It's all part of the patriarchy’s system of diminishing women and then refusing to acknowledge that this is what they are doing, precisely so that their labor can be exploited. It is key for this labor to remain unacknowledged and unvalued. Until, of course, women refuse to do it. Try it sometimes. Try to refuse to do labor that is seen as “natural” for a woman and all hell will fall down on you.
How dare you not buy presents for your in-laws! How dare you not do the labor of setting up a child’s birthday party or keeping track of all the children’s clothing and shoe sizes and their medical appointments. This is NATURAL for you. You must do it, and in order to be a good woman, you must allow other people to insist at the same time that it’s natural for you to do it and ALSO to tell you that it doesn’t matter if it’s done and you’re silly to complain about the time spent doing it because it isn’t valuable labor. Until you stop doing it.