Women's Work

On October 24, 1975, ninety percent of Icelandic women refused to work at paid jobs, in the home, or anywhere else. They called it a “day off”, though what they demonstrated was how much labor had been invisible. Schools closed, factories shut down, flights were cancelled, and men brought their children to work because there was no one else to care for them. The economy of Iceland effectively stopped. The women named what had been unnamed: everything they did without wages was work, and its absence was catastrophic. The standard way economists measure an economy is through gross domestic product. GDP counts what is bought and sold, but not what is done without money changing hands. A woman who cooks dinner for her family contributes nothing to GDP, but if she hires someone to cook dinner and goes out to work herself, GDP goes up twice: once for her wages and once for the cook’s. The economic system counts the second arrangement as more productive. This is not an oversight. Marilyn…