Women’s unpaid labour

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I’m still trying to put this together in a more coherent way but would appreciate thoughts on women’s unpaid labour.

School volunteering - trips/reading etc
Caring for relatives/neighbours
Brownies/Guides other community volunteering

I’m vaguely wondering how much of the crisis in healthcare/elderly care/school funding is driven by women who are now unavailable due to paid work.

I wondered what would happen if we all simply stopped doing it, and then I remembered the quote about Feminism, something like “we forgot about the children”. It’s a terrifyingly accurate example of how it is vastly different making a stand when you are the only one impacted to taking a position where someone vulnerable will be affected. How much of women’s responsibilities are forced upon them because men unconsciously or conspicuously know that women will not allow someone to suffer?

I’d love to see how those volunteering stats are collated. I’m guessing only specific work for organisations. What about caring? Unpaid childcare for relatives? Doing Mum/Dad/neighbour’s shopping/cleaning because he is on his own and frail? Is that recorded anywhere?

I’m presuming the cost of care for a person who has no relatives or neighbours helping is different from someone who has support.

It’s not just women. Some men also do a lot of unpaid caring. My father has done a lot of it in his life, maybe partly due to a lack of sisters or growing up in a household with no men. Ultimately part of the cause is the he systematic devaluation of domestic work. A hundred years ago a woman who stayed at home a did domestic work was considered to be doing a fine job. Today women who stay home and do domestic work are considered lazy golddigging idiots who are unaccomplished. Obviously I’m not saying that women should have been forced to stay within their gender stereotype but by forcing women into the traditionally male world we’ve made it socially unacceptable for anyone to undertake these responsibilities. Feminism needs to move away from equity towards equality and recognising the value of traditionally female roles is a part of that.

What about caring? Unpaid childcare for relatives? Doing Mum/Dad/neighbour’s shopping/cleaning because he is on his own and frail? Is that recorded anywhere?

I work in a supermarket. There are lots of men who bring their mum in to do her shopping, or husband's who are carers for their wives and lots of men who do shopping for their neighbours. I know because I talk to them. Often I'll say "do you know you've got 2 copies of this newspaper" and they tell you that they are getting one for their neighbour or something.

It really isn't just women who are doing this. Maybe it used to be when more women were at home but it's changing now.

Marnello - yes! The work has to be done, but if no one is doing it unpaid the cost falls to the state.

Times have definitely changed in terms of female participation in the workplace. I think that a lot of PTAs, churches and community events struggle to get the volunteer support and engagement that they might have done hitherto. Many people want these things to happen, but for someone else to do them.

Just as a small example, when I was growing up church fairs and school fairs often featured handcrafts that had been made voluntarily by parents (mostly mothers) and were being sold in order to raise funds. Nowadays, fairs also feature a lot of stalls run by mumpreneurs, MLM etc.