UK has got ‘fat’ on decades of free labour by women - Jess Phillips

I remember travelling through Romania, recently, where there were restaurants which were more like canteens. You would pay by the weight of the meal you bought.
Communism was totally into everybody being part of the machine and everything else was run by the state.
On another note, I remember being a happily sah mother and feeling utterly devalued by the message that Labour and Feminism were putting out. Not everything can be valued by a pay check.
I think the problem has been just this - people like JP think that an activity can only be perceived of as valuable by money and that there is no value in something that has no monetary value. Echoed by Feminism.
And it also forgets that most people have shit jobs and would probably prefer to be at home.

Yep. Clydebank Women's Aid has recently been forced to close.

www.clydebankpost.co.uk/news/25234792.first-minister-asked-closure-clydebank-womens-aid/

I actually think that JP was making a narrower point.

She was, sorry - just that I think that it's part of a wider issue of how women are expected to work for no reward/pay.

It's absurd that refuges are supposed to fund themselves, somehow. They absolutely should be funded by LAs.

It's a perfectly valid point. The UN have really fucked up a lot of the good work they've done. I think there's still space for them to be a force for good, but I see them as immensely flawed and compromised these days. I expect genderism is more of a symptom than a cause.

I am aware that I am looking at the messenger rather than the message, and I respect what you post arabellascott
But 2 flawed messengers diminishes the impact of an interesting argument, and it's probably my problem.

Oh yes, the same UN women that is so tuned into Women that it appointed Munroe Bergdorf as their representative for UK women.

Uk stats:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/womenshouldertheresponsibilityofunpaidwork/2016-11-10

'Women carry out an overall average of 60% more unpaid work than men, ONS analysis has shown.
ONS analysis1 of time use data shows that women put in more than double the proportion of unpaid work2 when it comes to cooking, childcare and housework.
On average men do 16 hours a week of such unpaid work, which includes adult care and child care, laundry and cleaning, to the 26 hours of unpaid work done by women a week.
The only area where men put in more unpaid work hours than women is in the provision of transport – this includes driving themselves and others around, as well as commuting to work.
When looking at economic status, full-time students do the least amount of unpaid work, while mothers on maternity leave do the most.
ONS figures for 2014 show that total unpaid work had a value of £1.01tn, equivalent to approximately 56% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).'

I appreciate this is broadening Phillips' original point, but I feel it would be disengenous to talk about unpaid labour without pointing out how unfathomably massive the assumption is that women are the unpaid skivvies of the world.

https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/unpaid-work/measuring-unpaid-domestic-and-care-work/

'Every day, more than 16 billion hours are devoted to unpaid domestic and care work around the world. As global populations age, these figures are set to rise, with a disproportionate impact on women.

Although of course, people have tried:

https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2024/10/care-a-critical-investment-for-gender-equality-and-the-rights-of-women-and-girls

'If women’s unpaid work were assigned a monetary value, it would exceed 40 per cent of GDP in some countries. Globally, women and girls spend more than 2.5 times as many hours a day on unpaid care work than men. This disparity prevents women and girls from fully realizing their rights and opportunities, throughout their lives. Women and girls remain the default providers of poorly paid and unpaid care work everywhere, and the most marginalized women – those who live in poverty, migrant women, women in informal work, and women from minority groups – shoulder the largest share of unpaid care work. An estimated 80 per cent of paid domestic workers worldwide are women.

Care of babies, children, care of the elderly. The value of women's unpaid labour is incalculable.

She is right but she is also a massive hypocrite. This makes it difficult for me to respect her.

Elder care in particular I think.

She'll lose her seat next time around to a Muslim candidate.
She's desperate to get some relevence, while ignoring two of the major things to effect women.
Nice try Jess

She's right. The world relies on women's unpaid labour.

I have found volunteering hugely rewarding, but have also had huge issues with it at times!

Breastfeeding peer support is a big one for me. If it was a male health issue, would male volunteers be there propping up the NHS by providing the support that health professionals don't have time to provide? Somehow I don't think so!

I don't think she's wrong, although her point becomes somewhat (rightly) obscured by the wider issue of violence against women and girls.

So many significant social goods have come out of unpaid female labour. Referring mostly to the history of England, as I am less sure how things developed in the rest of the UK:

18th and 19th Century: Before the Education Acts, primary schools often grew from Sunday schools, which were often taught - unpaid - by the wives and/or daughters of clergymen. 'Teaching in the school' is often alluded to in 19th Century novels as a suitable activity for middle class women.

Clergymen's wives were expected to perform social-care functions in their local community, such as visiting the sick and providing meals for people in need.

Nursing was often undertaken by volunteers.

Health visiting initially grew out of voluntary activity by middle-class women, who then employed female workers to visit the homes of poor families. History of Health Visiting - IHV

20th Century:

Women volunteered to serve in WW1 and WW2. I am not sure how many women served on a voluntary or paid basis, but there was certainly substantial, informal female labour involved in both war efforts.

The playgroups movement was a initially a volunteer-led movement, with mothers getting together to establish pre-school education for their children: Who we are | early years alliance

All the non-medical support services around birth originally began with volunteers: NCT, La Leche League, Breastfeeding Network...

Girlguiding, which for years was one of the few extra-curricular activities for girls.

Where should I stop? 😀

She’s right but it’s not decades: it’s centuries.

And as women withdraw from some of that free labour (such as elder care and child care) and society does not want to fund it, we start to have issues of affordability and availability.

While i appreciate this argument, it's a shame that things are brought down to money (which is what we're talking about here).
When I was a sah mother, and now that i'm retired, I enjoy giving something back and helping, when I could.
Imo that's how Society should work.
And, as far as i'm concerned, JP can take a running jump. She's been utterly useless in Gender matters, and facing up to militant Islam in her constituency.
Perhaps she should call out misogyny closer to home.

It is good that she is talking about free labour, the fact this is disproportionally supplied by women and the role this plays in propping up society but this is the thin end of the wedge. It’s not just safeguarding its providing care to the young and disabled in our own families. The disability benefit cuts may mean that unpaid carers no longer receive carers allowance. The payment is a pittance to begin with but the loss of daily living allowance plus carers allowance is devastating to those already on a low income. What’s the end plan? Not that disabled people will end up in social care at great expense leaving carers to rejoin the workforce. More likely that the disabled will be left to cope alone whilst their carers are forced into minimum wage jobs whilst also providing free labour to make ends meet.