The author continues with "The main problem with the countless definitions of work and labour is their one-sidedness. Generally, they emphasize some forms of work while neglecting others. For example, women’s work is often overlooked compared to men’s" (Lucassen, 2021, p. 1) providing a further example of "housekeeping [i]s real work [, as] ‘Despite the rise of takeouts, fast foods, and restaurant eating, unpaid preparation of meals probably constitutes the largest single block of time among all types of work, paid or unpaid, that today’s Americans do.’ If this is true for the birthplace of the Big Mac and Kentucky Fried Chicken, then we can safely apply this observation to the rest of the world and to human history as a whole" (p. 2, citing Tilly & Tilly, 1998, pp. 22-23).
We need to stop and think for a moment. While Lucassen provides evidence for the USA (2021): are there statistics for other nations? Well, yes, there are. Research has found that "women were spending substantially longer on childcare and housework than their male partners" (Seedat & Rondon, 2021, p. 3), and UN 2023 estimates put male household contributions at 11.5% of a day (or 2.75 hours) and women's as 18.75% (4.5 hours) in Australia and New Zealand. It appears that women in Aotearoa deliver a nudge under twice the contribution to unpaid household work as do men (Hanna et al., 2023, p. 7).
Why do we consider cooking and caring today to be women's work, and have not moved on to count - account - for it in our economic system? Are there assumptions that this work has no 'societal' value (except home cooking appears keeps us more healthy than if we eat takeaways)? Why does child-minding or housekeeping appear to have no value?
How did we get to this place of value being harnessed to cash in the door? Is it simply because outside work is more easily measurable because of our mediums of exchange (and is therefore taxable)?
Our world seems to run on concepts of money (exchange) and tax. It seems that transactions not linked to either don't get measured, and therefore have no meaning in our world. WHY this is provides an interesting historic and economic puzzle, which is not one I can solve!
Sam
References:
Hanna, T., Meisel, C., Moyer, J., Azcona, G., Bhatt, A., & Valero, S. D. (2023). Forecasting Time Spent in Unpaid Care and Domestic Work [Technical Brief]. United Nations. https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/technical-brief-forecasting-time-spent-in-unpaid-care-and-domestic-work-en.pdf
Lucassen, J. (2021). The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind. Yale University Press.
Seedat, S., & Rondon, M. (2021). Women’s wellbeing and the burden of unpaid work. The British Medical Journal (bmj), 374, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1972
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