“Unwaged housework is the productive labor without which there would be nothing else: no other labor, no workers, no economy, no society.” – Andaiye
With increased numbers of persons working from or staying at home, the invisible and unpaid labour of women has been growing by leaps. Women have always been relegated to perform the brunt of care work while reaping no benefits from it. This unfortunately will become more intensified under our current pandemic.
There is often a dismissive attitude towards the unpaid labour women provide as it is disregarded as a set of daily chores. Despite the fact that this work supports the entire economy, it is never accounted for in our GDP nor employment metrics. This work is ignored because of the simple and unfortunate reality that it is primarily considered the work of women. This work is seen as something we must do without compensation or thanks because it is a “duty” that comes along with our gender.
Unpaid and underpaid care work remains amongst the largest contributors to gender inequality and persistent poverty amongst women. Daily, labour is expended on cooking, cleaning, laundry, child and eldercare etc. things that are essential to the maintenance of our homes and economy, particularly in developing countries such as ours. The State reaps the benefits of the free/cheap labour provided by women, while invisibilizing their contributions towards services that should be supplied by the public sector. Were women to stop the unpaid work they do even temporarily, homes and economies would quickly begin to feel the strain of the labour they have left unacknowledged.
The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (2020) reported that the unpaid work carried out by women and girls has an economic value of $10.8 trillion per year and benefits the global economy thrice more than the entire technology industry. Added to that, the International Labour Organization (2018) estimated that 606 million women (41%) not active within the labour market is due primarily to their unpaid care responsibilities. This has tremendous impacts on not only the personal lives and economic survival of women around the world but also the growth and development of our economies.
The unequal share of work women often have foisted upon them affects not only their ability to participate in the workforce but also the quality of jobs that they are able to access. This is why despite women outperforming men academically; we are still nowhere closer to closing the gender pay wage gap or reaching better outcomes for women in the labour market. Even amongst high income earning women, their work does not stop once their “job” is done – another shift just begins. Women’s careers are significantly impacted by the requirements of care that often surround them. Women with no access to affordable childcare or who have to take care of elderly relatives, often lose their jobs because of the lack of reliability they are seen to have by employers. This limits women’s ability to pursue and retain waged jobs. They will often have to seek other jobs starting at lower levels of pay despite their experience, creating a cycle of low cost labour due to the impacts of care work they are burdened with.
Unpaid labour is taxing and robs of opportunities for women’s economic rights and empowerment. While professional women feel the effects of unpaid labour, it is the less affluent women who feel the weight of it. Indigenous and rural women particularly face higher levels of unpaid labour as they are more involved in not only traditional kitchen and house based domestic work but also pre and post harvest work. Given that caregiving and domestic labour is undervalued, this also results in low levels of pay for low income women, keeping them stuck in a vicious cycle of performing labour for the benefit of everyone but themselves.
In David Scott’s, Counting Women’s Caring work, interview with Andaiye, she made the point that “housework produced labour-power and reproduced labour-power everyday.” The economy cannot survive without the unpaid and underpaid work that women provide. Particularly now as care needs are growing exponentially as the global population of the aged and disabled are placed even at more risk and children are out of school. The gaps that are left by the public and private sector as it relates to unpaid work cannot be filled just by women alone, particularly with our current framework of not recognizing and compensating them for their labour.
There has been a persistent historic reluctance however to address unpaid labour. It is not seen as necessary investments into the workforce, but rather as expenditures that bear no returns. A limited and inaccurate view that sees more than half of our population unable to increase their participation in the labour force. Women’s participation does ultimately benefit the State though as it contributes to increased tax revenues, which in turn can be reinvested in social and developmental provisions. Through an investment in care provisions, quality jobs in sectors accessible to women will ensure there is further promotion of women’s economic empowerment. Employers too would benefit from this as lack of care services and how this burden falls on women has been linked to high degrees of turnover, absenteeism, lower productivity and increased difficulties of recruiting workers who are skilled.
There is a need for systemic policy changes regarding the unpaid work of women and movement towards ensuring that they are not being underpaid either. Policy areas to prioritize addressing of unpaid care work should be centred on public service, social protection, infrastructure and a movement away from “women’s work” and towards shared responsibility of labour within the family unit and wider society.
Ideas of shared responsibility are particularly important in shaping not only social norms concerning gender roles and expectation but also in shaping policies surrounding the structure, availability and length of maternity and paternity leave and provisions of cash transfers to those involved in caring work. This would strengthen social protection and public service domains as it will reduce the time women and girls exert on caring for dependents –freeing them up for paid work and other developmental opportunities.
