The continued invisible and unpaid or underpaid work of women
I’ve been thinking a lot (again) about how women continue to do a disproportionate amount of caregiving work… invisible, overlooked, devalued, under or unpaid emotional and administrative labor in the home, the workplace, and all around. And sometimes it feels like white women do it so cheerfully it makes it that much harder for women of color.
At an event recently, I heard a horrifying statistic - apparently 98% of food shopping is done by women!!!
Ok, so maybe I misheard this because the data I can find online ranges from 68% to 93%… but still, this is a LOT of food shopping that is being done by women… which in turn likely translates to a lot of cooking being done by women.
Oh and by the way, apparently it was also recently announced that the gender pay gap is INCREASING, and of course, the pay gap has long been larger for Black women compared to white men.
Do you think the two are related?
Yes, the workplace bears a large responsibility for this.
But we are not just talking about discrimination towards women in the workplace.
Capitalism extracts labor not just from the workforce but from the workforce supporting the workforce... the still usually female primary caregiver partners and relatives, as well as the often BIPOC as well as female child care providers, house cleaners and other domestic workers, often for the higher paid white male worker whose job really isn’t feasible without all that additional support, not just at home but in the office.
Yes networking opportunities, professional development and mentoring etc. etc. are important for women in the workplace but it’s not enough.
We have to redesign leadership roles so that people of all genders also have time to fulfill caregiving and other personal responsibilities outside of the workplace.
We also have to redesign social services - healthcare, childcare and education for starters - so that caregiving and other personal responsibilities outside of the workplace are less cumbersome.
Our society was specifically designed so those responsibilities would fall disproportionately on women, especially women of color, and most especially Black women.
Women are exhausted - and I believe this is to the detriment of all of us, individually and collectively.
Banner photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash