Housewives in the internet era

In the future, a number of married women, despite their higher education (bachelor or master degree), will still decide to dedicate their time for traditional housewife roles. We believe that these educated women will use their time at home, not only fulfill household responsibilities, but also to fulfill their hobbies and work from home with the aid of internet access.

Here, we will use the term cyber housewife (http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/twenty/lee2.html) to refer to married women who stay at home and spend a substantial amount of time on the internet. With more exposure to the internet, especially the World Wide Web, we suggest three future trendy jobs for cyber housewives: mystery shopper, remote personal assistant, and web designer. With those jobs, housewives will be able to fill two additional roles (besides traditional roles): a source of income for the family and a contributor to internet innovation. We suggest these three jobs because all of them do not require formal work experience, supervision, or technical training. Nevertheless, they offer cyber housewives the benefits of flexible time, moderate income, and opportunities to pursue their own hobbies such as shopping, organizing, and designing.

Housewives usually spend a lot of their time shopping, both in physical stores and internet stores, therefore they have a lot of shopping experience. Moreover, with the education they have, they should be fluent in formal and semi-formal writing, observation, and analysis. With typical free time after household responsibilities amounting to at least 5 hours per day, they are able to subscribe to a mystery-shopper website (e.g., http://www.shopperscritique.com) and report their shopping experience. With the average current pay of $20 per hour (as quoted on shopperscritique.com) and five hours to do this job per day, a typical cyber housewife can contribute an income of at least $3,000 to her family’s monthly income.

Housewives who can keep their home  well-organized can absolutely keep others’ daily work well-organized, too. In fact, the second future trendy job for housewives on the internet, remote personal assistant, requires an ability to communicate successfully in both written and oral form, to meet a certain deadline, and to focus on details in order to best assist the customer. Although the requirement of the remote personal assistent seem to consume a lot of time and effort, the job  is suitable for cyber housewives since they are familiar with most internet communication tools such as email, instant messenger (with or without web camera), as well as some other non-internet based tools such as telephone and facsimile. This job also provides them the ability to use skills and knowledge gained from their higher education, such as business computing skills (Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or Access), business writing skills (memo, formal and informal report, speech proofreading, initial email-responding), as well as some organizational skills (set and remind client of appointments, skim-read documents, etc.). With the modest average pay of $7-$10 per hour (as advertised on taskseveryday.com) and five to seven hours per day to do this job, this job can help a housewife to earn approximately $2,000 per month.

Internet access can empower individuals. Through the internet, many married women without formal training can acquire excellent knowledge and skills, among which is the knowledge of the World Wide Web, web design, and/ or graphical skills. For example, with repeated exposure to websites and graphics, most people find it easy to understand basic coding such as HTML, forum codes, and animation creation. Cyber housewives who have the patience, dedication, and willingness can teach themselves how to use Adobe Photoshop, Windows Movie Makers, or Microsoft Expression Web 2. Many cyber housewives enjoy creating web graphics for others to use on their own personal websites. It also gives the women opportunities to interact with other individuals via emails with or without monetary incentive, such as emails to request customized creations or how-to questions. A higher level of this web designing/ graphic designing job will be a network of individuals working as an organization to provide products and services to companies in need of outsourcing the website design.

Housewives spend the majority of their day either at home alone or caring for their children, yet need a feeling of usefulness and responsibility for their household financial health. They would be delighted to have a job and still manage to have time to take care of their family. Therefore, for those with personal computers and Internet access, the Internet would be the most convenient, affordable, and quickest method to achieve their needs. As mentioned in our previous entries (Team work on the internet, Virtual workplace- Let’s imagine), more than ever before, information technology is enabling housewives to advance their role in both family and society. Plus, with the rising popularity of such jobs, sooner or later, we will need to redefine the current term of unemployment ( so as to include working from home as self-employed) and restructure the labor force to best use available human resources.