Why Unpaid Care Work Remains Invisible in a $10.8 Trillion Economy

Image - Pixabay

Globally, women perform 76% of unpaid care work, injecting an estimated $10.8 trillion into the global economy. These statistics, however, remain invisible in annual calculations that are the basis of measuring a nation’s entire annual productivity. But is the term “productivity” in the workforce only restricted to the monetary value of goods and services bought and sold? The truth is, the real reason why paid productivity exists in the first place is due to unpaid productivity, measured in hard work, long hours, and constant resilience.

The modern dismissal of unpaid care work dates back to the start of industrialisation in post-Depression economies, where industries prioritised market transactions and the growth of an economy built upon capitalism. This oversight led to growing importance on profit-making jobs and acknowledging a person’s work through a physical pay check. 

The development of the GDP system nearly 80 years ago by economists James Meade and Richard Stone built upon these principles and devised the national accounting system to measure trade, economic inflow, and global transactions. However, when social economist Phyllis Deane applied the cornerstone GDP principle to her work around domestic economies in present day Malawi and Zambia, she postulated that the system was inherently flawed in that it was unethical to exclude the unpaid household labour of African women. She argued that it was “illogical” to exclude the economic value of collecting firewood, weaving mats or transporting water — acts of labour that were typically unquantified as they were viewed as simply “natural” to a woman’s daily routine. She argued that if the government truly wanted to formulate policies that increased a nation’s aggregate income and included an equal distribution of that aggregate, the equal contributions of these homemakers — including rural women — had to be accounted for.

Deane brought her research to Stone, urging him to recognise the flaws in the system. Unfortunately, Stone rejected her findings. As he oversaw the publication of the United Nations’ first system of bank accounts publication in 1953, it was clear that as long as the current system of GDP calculations persisted, the work of African homemakers would continue to remain economically unquantified despite being critical to the functioning of developing families and societies.

The growing invisibility for female labour provoked a backlash from several scholar-activists, such as Italian born philosopher Silvia Federici. Federici published a novel in 1975, called Wages Against Housework, in which she analyses how society shapes housework as an activity that has no place in a capitalism. Housework had to be transformed as a trait of a woman rather than be recognised as a social contract, because from the beginning of capital’s scheme for women, this type of work was destined to be unwaged. Capitalism convinced women that it was a natural, unavoidable and perhaps even fulfilling activity to accept unwaged work. The “unwaged” condition of housework is what makes it so trivialized and even mocked in society — framing homemakers as “naggers” rather than contributors. Much like God created Eve to support Adam, capitalism crafted the “housewife” as a behind-the-scenes puppet whose sole purpose in society was to serve but not receive. Hence, whilst a profit-making worker who demands more wages challenges his role but remains within it, a housewife demanding higher wages is a housewife that wants to break free of the plan a capitalist society has set up for them. Federici quotes “our faces have been distorted from so much smiling, our feelings have been lost from so much loving” . Essentially, the job of a housewife distorts the truth, the innate “femaleness” behind her. If what she states is true, to what extent will women attack their social role to its roots? The fact that such an invisible, tangled social construct exists means that people are not only oblivious to the laborious work of a housewife. The housewife herself begins to question if she ever once was a valued, recognised member of society.

In the 1970’s, Federici’s Marxist-feminist group called the International Feminist Collective launched an international campaign that demanded governments acknowledge the work that women did in the house. It was an unexpected yet patriotic rebellion for hundreds of women on the streets of Padua, Italy who rebelled for rights that they never should have felt the need to rebel for. Mariarosa, a founder of the IFC, notably stated that whilst some men condemned the young women who protested, the elderly women cheered on as the new generation of females would hopefully see how much women contributed to the social and cultural framework. Whilst some media published the event as partial or even reactionary, it was truly a reform movement that wished to overturn the female stereotypes of dependency and brand housewives a stronger, self-driven identity. This protest is marked as a strategic contribution to early waves of neo feminism and is truly reflective of the way housewives felt the need to denounce the recurring gender stigma around them.

While the campaign failed to secure wages, it ignited global conversations that sparked small yet successive steps to change. Uruguay’s 2013 National Integrated Care System implemented the care law that had an immense impact on millions of women across the country. Under the new law, all children, women, people with disabilities and elderly have the right to care and empowerment. For mother Soledad Rotella, mother of a two year old child Kiara, the impact of the law was immediate — she now had access to a free and quality childcare centre that enabled her to pursue a full time job and support her family of four children. Rotella has a 21-year-old son, two daughters aged 20 and 18, and young, 2 year old Kiara. “I could not afford to put my older children in daycare because at that time you had to pay for it, so I had to leave them alone,” Soledad recalls. “Sometimes, to bring food to the table, that’s what I had to do”. Rotella’s story reflects how a simple acknowledgement and appreciation can change lives, and how adequate care and respect can hopefully make her story a story for every underrepresented housewife.

Unpaid care work is the quiet heartbeat of an industrial society today. Without it, growing children would be no different than machines that breed off statistics and lack the emotion, care and innate “humanness” that housewives teach them every day. Even though my mother works at home, she is not ashamed of being called a housewife as she knows that it is a powerful role that has, over the years, been battered down by rigid societal expectations. The $10.8 trillion dollar question is not how we quantify this labour, but it’s how we honour it — not as a woman’s role but as society’s lifeline.