Reproductive labor

Young Housewife, oil painting on canvas by Alexey Tyranov, currently housed at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, Russia (1840s)
Part of the housework of a London housewife, 1941

Reproductive labor or work is often associated with care giving and domestic housework roles including cleaning, cooking, child care, and the unpaid domestic labor force.[1] The term has taken on a role in feminist philosophy and discourse as a way of calling attention to how women in particular are assigned to the domestic sphere, where the labor is reproductive and thus uncompensated and unrecognized in a capitalist system.[2] These theories have evolved as a parallel of histories focusing on the entrance of women into the labor force in the 1970s, providing an intersectionalist approach that recognizes that women have been a part of the labor force since before their incorporation into mainstream industry if reproductive labor is considered.[3]

Some Marxist anthropologists[4] and economists such as George Caffentzis[5] suggest that reproductive labor creates value in a similar way to the way in which productive labor creates value, by increasing the value of labor power. Economist Shirley P. Burggraf suggests additional value could be realized by replacing government support systems for the elderly (such as the US Social Security System) based on an individual's payroll tax contributions, with parental dividends proportional to the income of one's own children. Such a system could potentially achieve greater efficiency by introducing a return on investment for reproductive labor, thereby incentivizing the care and rearing of children.[6]

  1. ^ Duffy, Mignon (2013). "Reproductive Labor". In Smith, Vicki (ed.). Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. pp. 1213ff. doi:10.4135/9781452276199.n260. ISBN 978-1-5063-2093-9.
  2. ^ P., Burggraf, Shirley (1999). The feminine economy and economic man : reviving the role of family in the post-industrial age. Perseus Books. OCLC 1034666786.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Duffy2007 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference GriffithPreibisch2018 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Caffentzis, George (2013). "On the Notion of a Crisis of Social Reproduction". In Letters of Blood and Fire: Work, Machines, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Oakland, CA: PM Press. pp. 268–72.
  6. ^ Burggraf, Shirley (1997). The Feminine Economy and Economic Man (1st ed.). Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley. pp. 69–71. ISBN 978-0738200361.