Abstract:

For a long time, work was defined as a paid activity. Due to feminist pressure, work is now understood to include unpaid work. This inclusion was achieved by stressing the parallels between paid and unpaid work. But unpaid housework is an area of work that has (historically) continued to be viewed through that lens of "paid work."

In this talk, we will be making an innovative switch to instead view all work through the lens of unpaid housework. Reviewing the results of 300 questionnaires and eleven focus groups (having equitably approached both men and women from various ethnic groups as well as socially challenged groups) we have identified five different definitions of work, as well as an answer to the question of what one would define as "not-work." After sharing these, we will speculate on the questions "What new insights can we derive through such scholarship?" and "How might policies be affected if we were to adopt one of the alternative definitions of work?"