FAMILY, WORK, PRODUCTION, & REPRODUCTION

Response Question

What is the relationship between production, in the economic sense, and reproduction in all its senses?

Productive Work

• For mainstream economists the “productive economy” is:

Characterized by monetary exchanges through trade, the organization of work, distribution and marketing of goods, contracts, negotiation of wages and salaries, and so forth.

• For our purposes “productive work” will be paid labor.

At Home Work

• Assumption behind the productive economy is that there is someone (a wife) at home taking care of the domestic sphere so that the worker (gendered male) can be productive.• Laundry, food procurement and cooking,

home maintenance, bills/accounts, child rearing, elder care

• This produces a “second shift” or “double day” for women workers who often are the wife.

Reproductive Economy

• This domestic labor includes biological and social reproduction• Done mostly by women•Maintains daily life• Raise children; care for elders, etc.

• Often considered “unproductive” because it is unwaged• fundamental to the ability to do wage

work.

Importance of WWII

• WWII manpower shortages required women who might not already be working outside the home to help with the war efforts• New Skills and opportunities• Gained camaraderie with other women• eg) black women who had worked in isolation as

domestic servants now had an opportunity work within a large community of women.

• Unions-had to fight for workplace safety and equal pay issues.

Women and Work

• Women the world over have worked for millennia.• Until 1865, most black women in the US were in

bondage and performed forced labor.• In the US, 19th C working class white women

(many immigrants) worked in factory jobs.• In the PNW many Japanese American women

worked in farming.• Countless women of many ethnicities and races

worked at home caring for their families.

Discussion Questions

•According to Gustafson, why is the privileged family formation in US society?

Marriage Benefits

•Micro level?

•Meso level ?

•Macro level?