The New York Times, March 5, 2020: Women’s Unpaid Labor is Worth $10,900,000,000,000
Societies rarely take stock of the value of unpaid care work unless there is a disruption in the supply.
Unpaid labor — what the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development defines as time spent doing routine housework, shopping for necessary household goods, child care, tending to the elderly and other household or non-household members, and other unpaid activities related to household maintenance — remains largely invisible to economists.
It isn’t a part of G.D.P. calculations and rarely factors into other measures of economic growth. It is notoriously difficult to value because the normal market signals of supply and demand don’t work: Traditional expectations that caring for children, the elderly and the infirm should be done gratis within the family obscure the true economic value of this work. And yet what the example of Iceland shows us is that women provide a huge unacknowledged subsidy to the smooth functioning of our economies, which would grind to a halt if women stopped doing this work.
