The Invisible Woman: Why We Need a “Caring Economy”
On October 27, AEOO hosted a Zoom of Our Own conversation on Care Economies and women’s unpaid labor. Below is the video and the curriculum from the event for further reading, exploring, and sharing! Don’t forget to check out our Resource Library for even more feminist economic goodness.
(PS: The conversation/webinar series will continue. Check out our events here!)
DEFINITION BASICS
GDP / Gross Domestic Product: American economist Simon Kuznets developed GDP for a report to Congress in 1934, though he warned against its use as a measure of welfare. After the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, GDP became the main tool for nations to measure their economy. Used for comparison to the previous GDP measure, it shows whether the economy grew or decreased. GDP adds up all money spent by consumers, plus business investment and government spending, plus net exports (total exports minus imports.) Conversely, GDP can also measure all incomes from wages and salaries, corporate profits, interest and investment income; farmers’ incomes, and income from non-farm unincorporated businesses.
These measures are called nominal GDP. Real GDP goes a step further, adjusting numbers for inflation.
GDP omits our household production, our volunteer services, and a living environment.
RESOURCES FOR FURTHER LEARNING
Kirstie Brewer, BBC news, Oct. 23, 2015: “The Day Iceland’s Women Went on Strike.”
Terre Nash, documentary, 1995: Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics.
Marilyn Waring, Ted Talk, Jan. 23, 2020. “The Unpaid Work that GDP Ignores — and Why It Really Counts.”
Adam Hayes, Investopedia, July 8, 2019, “What is Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)?”
Jon Margolis, University of Vermont Gund Institute. “Good News, Vermonters, the State’s GPI is Going Up. Huh??” Vermont Digger, May 20, 2018.
Rickey Gard Diamond, Ms. Magazine, Women Unscrewing Screwnomics, July 13, 2019 on Riane Eisler’s Social Wealth Economic Indicators: “75 Years Later, Women are Finally Half the Sky at Bretton Woods.”
Frank Van Gansbeke, Middlebury College, Forbes, Sept. 15, 2020, “ Climate Change & Gross Domestic Product — Need for a Drastic Overhaul,” “…This Social Wealth Index (SWI) is designed” to highlight the economic returns from investing in caring for people and nature.
Riane Eisler on YouTube, Keynote Speaker at Bretton Woods 75th Anniversary: “What’s Next? Beyond Capitalism and Socialism.”
Riane Eisler, Center for Partnership Studies, in Tikkun Magazine, Summer 2018, The Next Economy: “Partnerism; Post-Capitalist/Post-Socialist Economics,”
Center for Partnership.org/news-events on SWI & Climate
Investopedia: Is Infinite Economic Growth on a Finite Planet Possible?
Paula Francis, co-founder of Gross National Happiness USA(GNHUSA.org) in a vimeo film about her cross-country Happiness Walk: 896 days on the road with 97 fellow walkers, and 1,943 interviews, asking: What Matters Most in Life?
Ginny Sassaman, co-founder of GNHUSA, Rootstock Publishing 2020: Preaching Happiness: Creating a Just and Joyful World.
From Feeding America, a food bank alliance: “Before the coronavirus pandemic, 35 million experienced hunger…up to two thirds of people facing hunger have incomes above the federal poverty line.”
Moms Rising.org works for maternal justice and workplace justice.
Gene Demby, CodeSwitch: Race in Your Face, June 9, 2019: “The Mothers Who Fought to Radically Reimagine Welfare.”
Felicia Kornbluh, The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. “…a moving reminder that women on welfare were once important political actors…. By the end of her book, one may find it hard not to ask whether this can happen again, and, if so, why not now?”
Here’s a Vimeo video link to Kornbluh’s interview about her 2018 book co-written with Gwendolyn Mink, Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective.
Caring Economy Fast Fact Sheets on Children, Fathers, Women’s Empowerment, and Care Crisis Trouble for the Economy and Women.
Megan Wildhood & Ruth Terry, Yes! Magazine, July 15, 2020: Hawaii’s Post-COVID Recovery Plan Puts Women First
Hawaii State Commission on Women, April 14, 2020, Building Bridges, Not Walking on Backs: A Feminist Economic Recovery Plan for COVID 19.
Duncan Ironmonger, Univ. of Melbourne Research Report, “Household Production and the Household Economy,” 2001. Australia’s household goods & services in 2000, The Gross Domestic Product, was estimated at $471 billion, nearly 80 percent the size of its market economy.
