Conclusion

Summary

The conclusion analyzes the rapid decline of residential domestic service in the last decades of the Soviet Union. The disappearance of live-in domestics did not prompt a discussion about who was now doing the housework. Instead, Soviet citizens relied on female part-time “helpers” and “sitters” or unpaid labor of grandmothers to make up for deficiencies in the Soviet service industry. With the growing concern with birthrates and divorces in late Soviet society, the metaphor of a kitchen maid to rule the state lost its revolutionary appeal. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it now serves to ridicule its original promise of egalitarianism. The book concludes with reflection on the key issues in the study of paid domestic labor as a global phenomenon such as its dependence on inequalities, the importance of government regulation of domestic service, and the potential of socialism to solve the problem of housework.