Women’s Unpaid Labor is Worth $11T | Hacker News Reader

Women’s Unpaid Labor is Worth $11T

nytimes.com

22 pointsvo2maxer28 comments

If someone posts an article comparing the performance of two Android phones the comments aren’t filled with “what about iPhones?!”. And yet every time gender is mentioned...

Guys, it’s OK for an article to discuss the different levels of unpaid labour performed by women in different countries. You don’t have to perceive it as an attack on men if you don’t want to.

> You don’t have to perceive it as an attack on men if you don’t want to.

I think people react like that because we have been conditioned into thinking that men are to blame for the status quo.

I know I will get downvoted for saying this but every thread on women issues always get hijacked by men talking about themselves and how the world is unfair to them. That doesn't happen on articles on men. Those don't get hijacked by women similarly.

My female friends always point this out and this is true. Every time someone talks about issues surrounding women, instead of letting them, men comes in swamp telling them how miserable their lives are. They don't go to a therapist to resolve issues they should but instead take any chance to vent on women. They don't try to make a community, movement or some statement to help other men left out but cry in misery. They told me how it awful was and the experience really sucked for them. It was toxic. They needed a baby sitter instead of a partner. They also wasted a lot of time on useless things and less on improving their lives i.e, hygiene, eating habits, schedule etc. They told me how they were relying them to pick up those daily stuff for them. That I'd consider unpaid labor and god knows how much labor they are performing for free.

Edit: I am only describing what I heard from them in the second part of the post.

> every thread on women issues always get hijacked by men talking about themselves

But why do you want men to fix it ? Should we ask more women to come comment on men's articles ?

From my point of view it seems like the lack of women coming to comment on men's problems articles - I don't believe we should ban men from commenting on women articles.

Read my other comment down below, it's not free labor since they are paid through the use and consumption of goods bought by their partners.

I don' see what is the point of this article. Because of how priorities and values work, labor performed for others must be paid (as otherwise why do it?), while labor performed for yourself and your family does not need payment, as the motivation is intrinsic. Calling it unpaid labor is manipulative and disingenuous - who should be paying me if I fix my own shoes for example? The whole problem statement makes no sense.

> who should be paying me if I fix my own shoes for example?

At no point does the article suggest that women should be paid $10,900B for their work. It is simply pointing out that the work they do has monetary value and highlights how different the gender balance is in different countries.

You fixing your own shoes is unpaid work, sure. Why does that render the article invalid?

It does seem disingenuous, as no one has ever claimed that "unpaid" work doesn't have value. It does have value, and that's why it's always compensated in one way or another.

In fact, arguably it's highly beneficial to families to have one partner that isn't paid on the books for this work, as that means they don't have to pay taxes on that pay.

My parents both worked, but a lot of my friends had stay-at-home mothers, and they seemed to be doing a lot better financially, perhaps partly due to this effect.

I would argue the exact opposite. Taxes substantially favor two smaller incomes over one bigger one because of tax brackets. Two people earning 30k before taxes will get a lot more money after taxes than one person earning 60k. Because of that, adding a second income of $X adds a lot more money than simply getting a pay increase of $X dollars.

Your example feels more like correlation than causation. The families that were well off could afford for one parent to stay home, while poor families required both parents to work to make ends meet.

That might be so if one could choose to work half-time for half pay. This option is usually not available, though, at least in the US. (Certainly I couldn't, particularly once one rolls in medical insurance effects.) There are pretty good reasons why many positions don't offer this option.

As for my example, I've no idea if the impression was correct. But it's certainly the case that stay-at-home moms stayed at home for cultural reasons and/or because they wanted to, at least where I lived. Being well off (ha) enabled this option, but it certainly didn't drive it.

edit: Note also that your scenario doesn't involve taxing unpaid work, which is what I was discussing. Instead you're just shuffling it around, which is a different argument.

My mother stayed at home while my father worked in an office. She did a lot of "unpaid work." He also fixed the car, re-tiled the roof, fixed the plumbing, changed the car's oil, and so on ... never got paid for it either.

So why is one type of unpaid work suddenly worth trillions, but the other isn't?

Also, your father presumably supported your mother and you with his wages. There are millions (billions?) of cases like that, and yet nobody is talking about "unprecedented wealth transfer".

It seems like the opposite of "unpaid". Husband does X hours of labour each year and gets 0.5 * total salary. Wife does Y hours of labour each year and also gets 0.5 * total salary.

It's not unpaid labour if you're getting paid for it, right?

No one is saying that men’s unpaid work is worth nothing. The article is merely highlighting how much women’s work is worth.

And let’s be clear: if your mom was at home all day Monday to Friday while your dad was at the office and then they both did unpaid work on the weekend then your mom did a lot more unpaid work than your dad did. Nothing bad or damning about that, but it’s the reality of a lot of women’s lives (especially in previous generations). And what do you know, the article does cover that!

> We also compared the distribution of unpaid work across genders. India has the largest gap: Women there spend almost six hours a day managing the home; Indian men spend a paltry 52 minutes. The smallest divides are found in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, where social safety net programs provide care for children and older people.

What I think the person you're responding to was really trying to say is closer to "why do people write articles about how much women's unpaid labor is worth, but not about men's?"

Just a question though, are we comparing hours or economic value when talking about 'more' unpaid work? In hours terms my (stay at home) mom definitely did more, but in terms of the dollar value of the labor, I think it's probably a toss-up (in the case of my childhood at least).

> why do people write articles about how much women's unpaid labor is worth, but not about men's?

I think the article makes its case via the quote I provided. It does talk about men’s unpaid work, albeit not in as much detail. The article was also published to coincide with International Women’s Day. Aside from anything else there are clear and obvious differences in unpaid work between men and women (as everyone in this thread agrees) so why not write about women specifically?

It honestly feels like parody to see an article like this and reply “won’t somebody think about the men?”

But it's absolutely not unpaid work though.

I imagine that these women also live under the same roof as their partner and consume food for free.

That has a cost which isn't paid in cash but is paid in exchange of work at home.

> I imagine that these women also live under the same roof as their partner and consume food for free.

Something often true of chattel slaves (especially those used in household as opposed to field work).

There's a reason labor law (as distinct from contract or tax law) tends, with limited exceptions, to require pay to be in cash or fungible cash equivalents to be counted as pay for meeting wage and hour minimums.

It’s still unpaid, because they aren’t getting paid.

They are compensated, yes. But the roof they live under (that they are responsible for) and the food they consume (which they went out and bought and cooked) is very difficult to quantify. How do you decide if the home they live in and the food they eat is adequate compensation? A woman looking after two kids every day is doing the same amount of work in a one bedroom apartment than she is in a mansion (possibly more, in fact). A woman that loses her home because her husband gets fired from his job now has no compensation through no fault of her own.

> "A woman that loses her home because her husband gets fired from his job now has no compensation through no fault of her own."

To flip that around, is a homemaker (female or male) that doesn't do the household chores sufficiently therefore depriving their externally employed spouse (again female or male) of compensation as well "through no fault of their own"?

I'd be surprised to hear of a good, functioning marriage where one or both spouses, regardless of the genders involved, treated it as transactional or as an adversarial business relationship, which is what your line of argument seems to be suggesting.

The difference is only a theoretical though, you would not be able to circumvent taxes by saying I'm not getting paid, I am only compensated with a Bank account which has a limit of $x every month. So yeah, there is a theoretical difference but not a practical one.

But the argumentation is kinda strange, if you think you are not compensated correctly you could always get a job and leave child/elder care to somebody else. If you don't want that, it seems that you are ok with the compensation. If your partner does not want that, the problem is not the unpaid work but the gender roles. If you can't get a job which pays more that you would spend, one could argue that you are probably compensated fairly.

> A woman that loses her home because her husband gets fired from his job now has no compensation through no fault of her own.

This is imo a valid point, because she would still have to do the work without compensation (even though as both don't have paid work they would hopefully share the work)

> But the roof they live under and the food they consume is very difficult to quantify.

No, it's very easy actually. The formula is: (rent + groceries) / 2.

So let's run the numbers for a simple case. One woman working at home, one man working at an office, no kids, both of them living in an appartement that costs $1000 / month and consuming $100 / week's worth of groceries.

If we're generous and say that it takes 3 hours / day, every day, to complete the at-home tasks, that means that the woman would've worked: (3 hours * 7 days * 4 weeks) => 84 hours / month.

At a minimum wage rate (because those are minimum wage level tasks), you get: 84 * ($7,25 / hour) = $609 / month.

Since the total spending was $1400 it means that the woman has under contributed a total of: ($1400 / 2 people) - $609 earned => $700 - $609 => $91.

This is of course without counting other expenditures like utilities, holidays, days-off, cars, etc.

> A woman looking after two kids every day is doing the same amount of work in a one bedroom apartment than she is in a mansion

Sure, but she also takes advantage of the mansion by living in it. Also, living arrangements are common decisions.

> A woman that loses her home because her husband gets fired from his job now has no compensation through no fault of her own.

A man who loses his job might lose his job and home through no fault of his own either. No difference there.

I can only speculate, that's just how I read that person's comment. That said, there does at least appear to be significantly more publicity surrounding women's issues, including labor, as well as the general value of women's contributions compared to men's.

> So why is one type of unpaid work suddenly worth trillions, but the other isn't?

How dare you express such a criticism?!!!

Here the research[0] the article is mentionning, and a direct link[1] to the paper:

[0]: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/t...

[1]: https://ousweb-prodv2-shared-media.s3.amazonaws.com/media/do...

One way we can solve this and make it right is by taxing overtime more. Men tend to do overtime frequently due to having more time in the absence of unpaid labor work women have to. That overtime tax can be used to compensate everyone equally. While it may not remove all disparity but it will level up the ground without direct discrimination.

That's already assuming that overtime is paid which is not the case in the vast majority of cases.

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