How Economists Forgot Housework
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Feminist economists argue that GDP statistics need to start taking account of care-giving and housework if we want to start valuing these things as a society.
For example author Katrine Marcal points out that Adam Smith claimed that the economy was based on self interest, overlooking the fact that his mother cooked his meals for free. Manuela Saragosa speaks to Hannah Peaker of the UK's Women's Equality political party, and professor Joyce Jacobsen of the Wesleyan University in the US.
(Picture: Young mother holds her crying baby while loading the washing machine; Credit: SolStock/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:08.2 | I'm Manuel de Saragossa. |
| 0:09.7 | Adam Smith is the father of modern economics. |
| 0:12.7 | But in this edition, we're talking about his mum. |
| 0:15.3 | If Adam Smith had thought a little bit more about his mother and what she did, |
| 0:18.9 | he would have realised that we do lots of |
| 0:21.2 | things that are economically important out of other things than self-interest. |
| 0:25.5 | Cooking, cleaning, caring. Why is unpaid housework not included in any economic calculation? |
| 0:32.0 | We measure the success and strength of our economy continually on ideas that are very masculine |
| 0:36.1 | in their nature. |
| 0:40.0 | Plus, what difference does a measurement make anyway? |
| 0:44.2 | Feminist economics coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:51.3 | Housework. It's the missing piece of the economic pie. |
| 0:56.0 | If unpaid, it goes unrecognised when measuring the goods and services that make up the total value of an economy. In a moment, how feminist economics wants to change that. |
| 1:02.4 | But first, meet homemaker Mary Lily Batchayayay from Ghana. |
| 1:06.9 | I am 52 years old. I am married with six children. |
| 1:11.6 | As a rural woman farmer, I get up early in the morning. |
| 1:16.6 | As far as 4 a.m., I have to go around, look for water, about a kilometer away. |
| 1:22.6 | I do cooking for the family. The children set out for school. |
| 1:26.6 | Then by 7 a.m. I have finished with |
| 1:29.7 | the household choices. Then I set up to work on the farm because my husband is the farmer. |
| 1:35.8 | Work on the farm, weeding. I look for other vegetables in the farm, which I will send home |
... |
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