Gender and the Value of Care Labor

01/06/2023

Gender and the Value of Care Labor

She who works with her hands is a laborer. She who works with her hands and her head is a craftsman. She who works with her hands and her head and her heart is an artist.
Francis of Assisi, 1181-1226

"While research shows men are taking on more child care and housework than ever before, women continue to perform more physical and emotional labor in their families, irrespective of age, income or workloads. Sometimes called the mental load or the second shift, this is a phenomenon Eve Rodsky attributes to a fundamental mishandling of time," reports Andee Tagle, who interviewed Rodsky on NPR’s Life Kit. "There are a lot of toxic time messages out there... Consider the phrase time is money. Maybe you're a woman who feels obligated to do more at home because you bring home less pay or your job is more, quote-unquote, ‘flexible.’"

Rodsky remarks, "We have a pay gap in this society. And what is even more ironic is that when women outearn their partners, they still do more unpaid labor."

Eva Kittay, author of Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency, further explains: "Because dependency labor has never occupied a clear place in our economic order and paid labor competes with a vast unpaid workforce, dependency work tends to be poorly paid. Yet even at the depressed wages of paid dependency work, for many, the cost of this labor seems too high, especially as it is expected to be free when performed by female family members."

In Illuminating Care, Carol Garboden Murray offers, "As we advocate to elevate and professionalize care through our work as early childhood teachers, let us always be clear—special skills, knowledge and dispositions are needed to care with excellence, but the skills, knowledge and dispositions needed are not narrowly defined by gender or restricted by lifestyle. Caring is expansive and inclusive, available to all, and strengthened by the diversity of humanity."

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