What Would Happen if Women Go on Strike? — Women’s Unpaid Work

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LEAP - Voices of Youth

4 min readMar 7, 2021

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How much time do you spend on domestic works? Have you ever thought if it is fair for women or mothers to spend their time doing unpaid house chores? How much do men contribute to house chores?

If someday all women refuse to work, what will happen?

What is social reproduction? The “unpaid” works of women

According to a piece of news in 2018, a single mother sued her son for not offering her “nurturing fee.” She had signed a contract with her son beforehand about supporting her financially when she gets old, but the son regretted it. The case ended up ruling the son to pay 20 million NT dollars, which is the amount the woman got a loan to offer her son for cram school and college.

Put aside the validity of these contracts and the controversy of how to measure caring responsibility, scholars indicated a value in society from this event: the time and money for raising a child are taken for granted. Thus, the old lady would worry about her senior life with no savings and no one around.

This event reflects the questions brought up by Social Reproduction Theory: How are the workers that create the production value been “created”? Who satisfies the worker’s daily needs?

According to the research done by Executive Yuan in 2017, a woman spends three times more than men taking care of others every day, which are 3.88 and 1.13 hours, respectively. The “feminized” caregiving work is excluded from the labor market and regarded as an unpaid duty.

Having a job = women’s liberation?

Many people think that once women go to work, they will escape from the curse of unequal house chores distribution. In reality, women get twice the workload — paid jobs in the daytime and heavy unpaid house chores at night.

As the statistic shows, men declare that they spend 1.11 hours fixing and maintaining house facilities as women spend 35.54 hours every week buying groceries, cooking, doing dishes, doing laundry and cleaning up houses.

A Facebook user in Taiwan wrote a post that “My husband is totally useless, the only thing he does is earning money.” Then she addressed her gratitude for her husband being the financial support of the family, or else, “no money, no home.” Yet, if the statement is reversed as “no home, no money.” Wouldn’t it also make sense?

People’s value is still evaluated by the income, and women’s time on chores is taken for granted and not seen as a product. Hence, even if a woman goes to work, it’s impossible for her to strike a balance between work and house chores but be on duty 24/7 without a day off.

Neoliberalism’s cage — the vicious cycle of un-paid work

In middle- or high-income households, it is possible to farm out caregiving or cleaning work to others. Yet they easily fall onto another group of women who are racially and financially underprivileged. The whole process is formed as an out-sourcing food chain.

Women who accept these low-paid jobs are not as wealthy and resourceful as middle-class women. Besides taking care of children at home, the women need to squeeze time earning money, yet the jobs they found are often short-term, unskillful, and low-paid. They could not get out of the cycle of poverty even with twice the workload.

Are these choices from an individual’s free will? Scholars found that industries with women’s involvement will create a low-paid environment. Thus, instead of saying women choose low-paid jobs, it is the low-paid jobs that choose women. Further, by looking into the choices people made, when women spend more time on unpaid tasks, the gender pay gap would be enlarged. Women, therefore, fall into the contradiction of self-determination: when they want to earn money for daily necessities, they fall into the un-free choices of being low-paid.

Rethink the value of domestic work

All in all, women take on most unpaid house chores, and the out-sourcing jobs are still low-paid and passed to more underprivileged women. Scholars state that it is necessary to think out of Capitalism’s logic to break the vicious cycle.

Also, capitalism cannot work normally without domestic chores. Distinguishing work field and house chores present undervaluing social reproduction. That is, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning houses, and raising kids are all closely connected to market production.

The article is not strongly stating that house chores should be measured with money, but emphasize how the burden of social reproduction unequally falls onto women and is ignored by the whole society. Imagine if someday all women refuse to work, how the financial burden and house chores simultaneously could be well handled?