Conference turris::womannotes-v2

493.0. "Women's Work in World Economics" by TUT::SMITH (Passionate commitment to reasoned faith) Thu Mar 09 1989 10:56

From an article by Robert Metz in the BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE, March 5, 1989
(without permission): 

Marilyn Waring, former Member of Parliament in new Zealand, studied world
economies for 14 years before publishing ... her new book, "If Women Counted"
(Harper & Row). 

She makes convincing arguments when she explains how the world economic system
measures who actually does productive labor and who does not.

She uses a young girl named Tendai as an example.  Tendai, who lives in Lowveld
in Zimbabwe, gets up at 4 a.m. to fetch water in an eight-gallon tin from a
well seven miles away.  She walks barefoot and is home by 9 a.m. to eat a small
breakfast.  She goes off to gather firewood until noon when she cleans utensils
from the family's morning meal and prepares the family lunch.   After lunch and
the cleaning of the dishes she gathers wild vegetables for supper before making
her evening trip for water.  Her day ends at 9 p.m., after she has made supper
and put her younger brothers and sisters to sleep.

Tendai is unproductive, unoccupied and economically inactive, according to the
international economic system.  She does not work and is not a part of the
labor force.

Nor is Cathy, a young, middle-class north American housewife who spends her
days preparing food, setting the table, serving meals, clearing dishes from the
table, washing dishes, dressing and diapering her children, disciplining
children, taking the children to day-care or to school, disposing of garbage,
dusting, gathering clothes for washing, doing the laundry.

"Cathy has to face the fact that she fills her time in a totally unproductive
manner.  She, too, is economically inactive, and is recorded as such," writes
Waring.

Ben, a highly-trainined member of the US military, goes to an underground silo
with a colleague to wait for hours at a time for an order to fire a nuclear
missile.  He's skilled and effective enough to kill his colleague if the other
fellow goes beserk and interferes with a command to fire the missile.  Ben is
considered a worker.

The international economic system says his work has value and contributes to
his nation's growth, wealth and productivity.



There is other invisible or "informal" work that escapes the count.  Consider
the bartering of goods in many flea markets.  Volunteer work for charities is
not included in the formal reconing either.  Consider giving and receiving
services in social networks of relatives, friends, neighbors and acquaintances.
All such activities may account for 10 percent or more of American GNP, yet
worldwide, such activities remain economically invisible.

Waring believes a system that overlooks so much is inappropriate for making
decisions that affect world commerce.

You may argue with her conclusiong that these anomalies reflect a
male-dominated world propagated in large part by white male economists with
professional axes to grind.  But it is hard to argue that the data the various
nations and the United Nations uses is not woefully inadequate and perhaps
worse than nothing.

Waring, a feminist, wants reform for women's sake in the first instance -- so
that the work of women who stay a home to raise childrne will be included in
world economic numbers.  She also wants more attention paid to damage to the
environment.

John Kenneth Galbraith, a Harvard economist, calls "If Women Counted" a
"splendid work ... no concerned woman (or man) can ignore it." Waring tells me
that Galbraith was a source of help and inspiration.