The Return of the Housewife Emma Casey
Event details
Housework is good for you. Housework sparks joy. Housework is beautiful. Housework is glamorous. Housework is key to a happy family. Housework shows that you care. Housework is women's work.
Social media is flooded with images of the perfect housewife. TikTok and Instagram 'cleanfluencers' produce endless photos and videos of women cleaning, tidying and putting things right. Figures such as Marie Kondo and Mrs Hinch have placed housework, with its promise of a life of love and contentment, at the centre of self-care and positive thinking.
And yet housework remains one of the world's most unequal institutions. Women, especially poorer women and women of colour, do most low-paid and unpaid domestic labour. Sociologist Emma Casey, author of The Return of the Housewife, will discuss why these inequalities matter and why they persist after a century of dramatic advances in women's rights.
Join Emma for an illuminating look at the world of cleanfluencers as she examines why the burden of housework still falls on women. Prepare for a powerful call to challenge the prevailing myths around housework and the 'naturally competent' woman homemaker.
Book sales
You can buy copies of many of our speakers’ books from Fox Lane Books, a local independent bookseller and Festival partner. In some cases, author signed bookplates are available too.
About the speaker
Emma Casey is a Reader in Sociology at the University of York, UK, where her research broadly seeks to redress the relative lack of prominence of sociological studies of domestic life and experiences. She is the author of Women, Pleasure and the Gambling Experience and The Return of the Housewife: Why Women are Still Clearing Up (Manchester University Press, 2025).
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