Feminist criticisms of conventional macroeconomic policies: Macroeconomy is not gender-neutral
Work performed by women is seen as dispensable
Feminist criticisms of conventional macroeconomic policies
Unpaid care work is not included in macroeconomic calculations and not compensated
Gender is the basis of the most widespread stereotype in the world: women and girls work at home, undertake care work, and thus engage in care work activities (for sick people, children, men, older people, and people with disabilities). Women and girls do the lion’s share of unwaged work on the land and on protecting the community and natural resources. This caring work done outside the home is for many a ‘natural’ extension of the caring work done inside the home.
The current economic system depends on this sexual division of labour (largely unpaid and stereotypically defined) to ‘reproduce’ the energy needed for men to undertake ‘production’ in the public sphere of paid employment. This care work by women and girls is also required to prepare new generations of workers for the ‘productive’ economy, through the reproduction and rearing of children. This ‘reproductive’ burden and the way it is framed and exploited within society results in women and girls losing many educational and economic opportunities, and the continuing entrenchment of gender inequality across many aspects of women’s lives.
Read an interview with Liz Hilton and Bee Pranom Somwong on the #CareIncomeNow campaign. Image credit: Empower Foundation
Due to this stereotype, it is assumed and encouraged that women and girls ‘belong’ at home, and undertake unpaid care work responsibilities, while men and boys are responsible for the income-generating activities outside of the home. Economics (especially macroeconomics) concerns itself with the income-generating activities and considers ‘production’ to mean production of goods and services in the public sphere. This means the unpaid ‘reproductive’ work undertaken by women and girls in the private sphere is not included in the calculations of economic indicators.
Through data collected from 53 countries, ILO’s report estimates that unpaid care work would amount to 9% of the global GDP, worth 11 trillion USD annually. Furthermore, “when measuring by an hourly minimum wage, unpaid care and domestic work is valued at around 40 percent of GDP.”1International Labor Organization. (2018). Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/—publ/documents/publication/wcms_633135.pdf
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which we have detailed in Annexe I, is one of the primary measures against which the growth, strength, and size of an economy is assessed. It does not include the unpaid ‘reproductive’ production in its calculations, thus overlooking the contributions of women and girls to the economy to a very large extent. This affects which macroeconomic policies and decisions will be prioritised. Unpaid care work becomes invisible and undervalued, causing the needs and contributions of women and girls to be overlooked, while undertaking this unpaid care work. In return, this invisibility translates into macroeconomic policies that at best disregard the lives of women and girls, and at worst directly harm them.
In recent years, gender-disaggregated analysis of time-use surveys (how individuals allocate their time to specific activities over a specified period) has shown that unpaid care work does constitute a substantial amount of work that is sustaining the economy and helping the whole world to continue on its path. Globally, approximately 42% of work hours is dedicated to unpaid care work. In 2018, the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) found that women spend a daily average of 3.1 hours on unpaid care work duties, 74 minutes more than men. The amount of time spent on unpaid work increases even more in countries and regions where public services are unable to deliver the living essentials (anything from childcare to safe water) to households, evidence for advocacy on these areas. These studies have also opened up the understanding of poverty into new areas such as multidimensional poverty, e.g. time and income poverty.
Feminist criticisms of conventional macroeconomic policies: Macroeconomy is not gender-neutral
Work performed by women is seen as dispensable
Footnotes
- 1International Labor Organization. (2018). Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/—publ/documents/publication/wcms_633135.pdf