[lbo-talk] Servant culture

[Diane Monaco]

Jenny wrote:
>Yoshie wrote:
> >In conclusion, I stand by my thesis that women's economic dependence
>
> >on men is the least common among the poorest and the most common
>
> >among the bourgeoisie in rich modern nations, because poor men whom
>
> >poor women tend to encounter, sexually or otherwise, are the least
>
> >capable of supporting dependents.
>
>I still think your construction of dependency is unnecessarily strict.  I
>don't disagree on the very poor--because as I said before, the issue is
>unemployment--so I suppose what we're debating is the huge middle ground 
>where most
>women live.  (IIRC the U.S. and Japan have a fairly high gendered wage gap 
>among
>industrialized nations, with Australia the best with women making 91% of what
>men make.)

I agree with Jenny that this is a strict and narrow definition of economic 
dependence.  I mean, why focus on “paid market production” only?  Why 
exclude the value of all the “unpaid production” and “social reproduction” 
that is an overwhelming part of our overall economic activity?  Is it 
because women do most of it?

Before the depression there was no real accounting of the value of 
"production," but then some time in the 1940s a national income accounting 
system (GNP, GDP, NI, 
) was setup (by male economists of course) and many 
decisions were made to exclude this and that.  The most devastating was the 
exclusion of that we now call social reproduction and unpaid labor 
production.  Social reproduction involves economically productive 
activities (the care of both dependent and independent members of the 
community) that are absolutely essential to production; a good portion of 
production will just not happen without them.

Furthermore, the United Nations has estimated the value of all unpaid labor 
production to be around 35 percent.  Unpaid and informal sector economic 
activities remain fundamentally uncounted for in our labor force estimates 
and national income accounts, but have been estimated in some developed 
countries to range from 15 percent of GDP in Japan to 54 percent in 
Australia (now there’s a possible clue to understanding the smaller 
male-female wage gap in Australia as Jenny discusses). Are we being 
slightly patriarchal and sexist  like the economists who set up our formal 
accounts -- to exclude the value of unpaid labor and social reproduction 
from our own account of the situation?

Women produce most of our global output.  Women provide almost all unpaid 
production; almost all social reproduction; and a good portion of all paid 
production.  Suppose we attempted a little experiment and sent all the men 
on earth for year long vacation (all expenses paid and no work to do) to 
planet x3pz in 2004.  Then we did the same for all the women on earth in 
2005 (sent them to planet x3pz that is).  My question is what would the 
planet EARTH be like in 2004 and 2005.  How would the economic dependency 
conditions differ from those in 2003 and how would they differ from each other?

Thanks for the great discussion!

Diane