Women’s Unpaid Work and the Apocalypse Re-imagined

by: Clarisse Baniqued and Annabs Sanchez
 
 I’ve been thinking about the apocalypse lately. On how it won’t be brought upon by another great flood, an attack by a giant angry lizard, a slew of battle-ready robots, a takeover by vicious alien life, or a hellmouth in a high school.

No, it won’t be because of something as obvious as any of that. It will be because of something more monstrous, more ruthless, more unthinkable – it will be because of the unpaid work of women.

The United Nations says that women work longer hours than men—an average of 30 minutes a day longer in developed countries and 50 minutes in developing countries – when both paid and unpaid work are taken into consideration.

It’s evident that gender stereotypes are at the core of women bearing the burden of unpaid care work.

A 2015 report by McKinsey Global Institute estimates that “[I]n some regions, such as South Asia (including India) and MENA, women are estimated to undertake as much as 80 to 90 percent of unpaid care work.”

Spending three more hours a day in housework and up to ten times more in caring for children, the elderly, and the sick, on top of their work outside the home. Hours, that amount to an estimated $10 trillion a year (or roughly equivalent to 13 percent of the global GDP) – using conservative assumptions.

And with such astronomical numbers, it’s no surprise how many scholars believe, that, if all women stopped doing all their unpaid work such as housework and caregiving, the economy will collapse. And if that isn’t the modern day apocalypse, I’m not sure what is.

However, without diminishing importance of talking about the growing wage gap and women remaining economically subordinate to men, the conversation about women’s unpaid work shouldn’t be limited simply to an economic one.

We should shift the discussion to one that includes issues of social justice, health, and migrant domestic workers among others.

So don’t worry about pissed off, nuclearly modified Herculean reptiles or vampire hellmouths (there’s a feminist vampire slayer taking care of that), the apocalypse will come if the unpaid work that women do are left undervalued and unappreciated.

To learn more about this re-imagined apocalypse, I’m sharing a link list put together by Isis International intern, Clarisse Baniqued on women and unpaid work. (posted by Becky D. de Asis/ The Redline News desk)