13 Facts About Unpaid work

Unpaid labor or unpaid work is defined as labor or work that does not receive any direct remuneration.

Unpaid work labor is visible in many forms and isn't limited to activities within a household.

Millions of volunteer hours of unpaid work contribute to free services that others consume via social media and Wikipedia in a new parallel economy.

Since the 1960s the spread of globalization has given rise to new opportunities for women to participate in market Unpaid work that has challenged the assumption their primary adult role as that of caretaker for the family and home.

Furthermore, women's gender roles are socially constructed within the economy as well, because their economic contributions can be easily replaced for men through remarriage or by paying for care services; care work can be bought and sold, but the vast majority of care work is unpaid and is not formally accounted for.

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Unpaid work contributes to the economy by producing important goods and services such as meals and cleanliness of the home.

Hirway notes that unpaid domestic work has the attributes of a standard economic good because it is neither free nor unlimited.

Unpaid work affects the labor supply of the economy because fewer women are entering into the workforce due to their domestic unpaid work duties.

Unpaid domestic work is typically the type of work that a state would provide for its citizens if family members were not already providing for their family.

Opportunity cost method measures the value of unpaid domestic work by calculating the amount of money unpaid domestic workers could be making if instead of doing unpaid work they were working in the labor market.

For example, if a former female attorney is a stay-at-home mother conducting unpaid domestic work, the value of an hour of unpaid domestic work is the hourly rate she could make if she were working as an attorney.

Replacement cost method measures the value of unpaid domestic work by calculating the monetary cost of purchasing that service instead.

In Nancy Fraser's article, "After the Family Wage: Gender Equity and the Welfare State" from 1994, she suggests that in two partner households a reduced Unpaid work week is the most efficient vehicle for assuring gender equality.