ON THE SYSTEMIC DEVALUATION OF REPRODUCTIVE LABOR

摘要

In exploring the role of women and children in community, this paper will focus on the systemic failure of the current economic accounting system to recognize or to acknowledge the vital and foundational role of reproductive labor, generally performed by women and usually without remuneration. The unidimensional emphasis on productivity, on maximizing the throughput of material goods in the marketplace, has resulted in a tremendous waste of resources, both natural and human. Ecofeminist scholars have drawn attention to the connection between the devaluation of the reproductive labor of women and the parallel devaluation of the regenerative work of nature. Of course, reproductive labor must be understood in as comprehensive a sense as possible, beyond the obvious tasks of having babies and raising children; in the broadest sense it encompasses all of the work involved in reproducing the conditions of daily life: growing and preparing food; caring for the young, old, and infirm; sustaining community relationships; and passing on the cultural heritage to the next generation - maintaining the household of humanity. The word economics is rooted in the Greek work oikos, meaning household, and originally referred specifically to the management of the household. Oikos is also the root of ecology, the study of nature's household, in terms of the relationships among living beings within community. The poverty of human community in our fast-paced and commodified lives at the dawn of the twenty-first century beckons us to reexamine the economics of our collective household and challenges us to find ways to reassign value to those intangible dimensions of being and sharing with others that sustain us in both material and non-material ways that are absolutely essential to our wellbeing.