At the start of Chapter 9, hooks describes her personal experience with the notion that work outside the home is the answer to the problem of patriarchy. hooks criticizes this suggestion, as she observed “firsthand that working for low wages did not liberate poor and working-class women from male domination” (48). Reformist feminists who equated social equality with liberation “meant high-paying careers” (48), and hooks states that “[t]heir vision of work had little relevance for masses of women” (48). As well, the focus on work as a liberating force led many women to believe that feminism was at fault for “making it so they have to work” (50).

hooks acknowledges that the woman at home alone working as a housewife “was often isolated, lonely, and depressed” (50) and that “[h]ome was only relaxing to women only when men and children were not present” (50). This acknowledgement, as well as one that states that “home is a workplace” (50) for women at home who spend their time looking after their families, serves to remind the reader of the complex situation around women and work in the early days of the feminist movement. The complicated needs of all different women in all different situations leads hooks to conclude that the focus should be on poverty as a women’s issue, and that “the reality of mass unemployment for both women and men” (51) demands that society and its leaders “rethink work” (51).