Economist Leonora Risse’s unpaid labour calculator isn’t just showing us that our unpaid work deserves a dollar amount put on it – on average, about NZ$49,000 a year! How many more hours do women spend on unpaid labour than men do? Can you ‘measure a mother’s love’? And why is unpaid labour – which is, predominantly, women’s labour – not counted in countries’ economic measurements?
Want to know how much you’d get if you were paid for your unpaid labour? Australian economist Dr Leonora Risse talked to Capsule over Zoom about her unpaid labour calculator.
Work out your number here. Plug in how many hours a week you spend on household work (including cleaning, cooking, meal planning, and the mental load), childcare (including pick-ups, drop-offs, weeknights and weekends), caring for an elderly person, and volunteer work. Then, you reach a dollar amount for your unpaid labour per year (if you were paid for it, which you aren’t).
“Of course, it depends on your stage of life or situation,” Leonora says. For instance if you have a baby, an elderly parent, or a disabled family member.
The calculator is, frankly, a brilliant tool, because it’s quick and easy for people to use (it takes less than five minutes), immediately attaches a dollar value, and gets people talking.
Although this calculator is based on Australian numbers, Leonora says she has no problem with New Zealanders using the calculator and related numbers as a guide, “given the many similarities between the countries”.
To understand the calculator, we first need the background. An Associate Professor in Economics at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, among other involvements, Leonora has written an academic paper called “By How Much Is ‘Women’s Work’ Undervalued in the Economy?”. It tests a hypothesis: that work traditionally undertaken by women is systematically valued less than men’s (taking into account both paid and unpaid work).
Leonora drew on figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey, which showed that women do three hours and 56 minutes of unpaid work per day – whereas men do, on average, two hours and 28 minutes of unpaid work per day.
Yep, women do an hour and a half more.
Crunching the Numbers
So how did Leonora crunch the numbers?
She began by calculating the dollar value of an unpaid ‘productive activity’ (for example, cooking is considered ‘productive’, while reading isn’t). To do this, she used a ‘replacement wage’ methodology. Call it a proxy wage. Leonora calculated the dollar value of each unpaid hour looking after children as the equivalent of a childcare worker’s average hourly wage rate. Ditto with a kitchenhand’s average hourly wage, a domestic cleaner’s average hourly wage, and an aged-care worker’s average hourly wage. Leonora then adjusted this rate to account for gender-based undervaluation, by measuring the extent by which an occupation is systematically paid less on the basis of its gender composition.
Drawing together data from the proxy wage and the time-use survey, Leonora calculated that Australian women do, on average, AU$771 ($NZ940) worth of unpaid labour per week, and AU$40,092 (NZ$48,910) worth of unpaid labour a year.
But our unpaid labour could actually be worth more than that. “My calculations are more on the conservative side because there are caveats,” Leonora says. Her calculations don’t factor in extra pay that may be offered for working non-standard hours, such as overtime and night shifts. Also, often people do more than one productive activity at once, such as looking after children while cooking – but, technically the time-use survey only records one main activity at a time.
Leonora – who wasn’t surprised by the AU$40,092 figure – hopes it will be galvanising. “I think the number is sizable enough for people to take note of the magnitude of unpaid labour. But sometimes those big dollar values can feel a bit abstract for the everyday household.”
That’s where her unpaid-labour calculator comes in: to make it more personal – and to spark conversations.
Counting Love?
When Australian media covered this, Leonora was very interested to see the comments on social media. “It was an insightful way to gauge not just people’s perceptions of this information, but the impact it made on them.”
“It was really heartening for me when women said ‘I feel seen, I feel recognised, I feel appreciated’. Maybe their unpaid labour isn’t being appreciated enough by their family – and by extension, it isn’t being appreciated enough by policy decision-makers and leaders. Women felt left out of all this economic talk. Some women expressed they were sick of hearing politicians and economists focusing so much on GDP.” (Gross Domestic Product counts paid labour only.)
Leonora also read some social-media comments that she didn’t anticipate, but understood once she read them. “Responses – both from men and women – critiqued this process of attempting to put a dollar value on care. Comments like, ‘I feel it’s insulting to try to put a dollar value on caring for children’. Or ‘how can you put a dollar value on a mother’s love?’.”
“Men were writing comments like, ‘motherhood is the highest calling – it’s above and beyond a dollar payment’. Other people responded to those comments logically, saying, ‘okay, if it’s the highest calling, why aren’t more men pursuing it?’.” Because, yes, men can be primary caregivers – and do other unpaid domestic work too.
Leonora speaks of patterns in unpaid work. “Men tend to do household tasks that aren’t necessarily urgent: like fix the fence, sweep the leaves, clear the gutters. These aren’t necessarily regular tasks and don’t take a long time.”
“Meanwhile women do more of the time-urgent, routine and probably less pleasant things.” For example, doing the dishes or changing a child’s nappy can’t be put off long and needs doing often.
Women Are Doing a LOT
The Australian time-use survey showed that women are doing roughly an hour-and-a-half’s more unpaid work a day than men. Women contribute nearly 61.5% of the total time spent on unpaid work in Australian, while men contribute the remaining 38.5%. Also, 55% of Australian women’s labour contribution to the economy is in the form of unpaid work and care, compared with 31% of men’s contribution.
However, mainstream economic models ignore the time spent on unpaid work, Leonora says. “If they do carve out a place for unpaid work, they consider the decisions regarding who does the paid or unpaid labour within a household as a matter of individuals’ choices and personal traits. This conventional economic view of a ‘household bargaining’ model considers that two people should specialise in different tasks according to their perceived strengths and biological roles.” But it’s not as simple as that. “These traditional economic models don’t understand the way that social norms shape household decisions, and simply compound and reinforce gender stereotypes.”
Oh, and can economists please stop banging on about getting more women into the economy? Because the numbers don’t justify that statement. If you apply standard economic measurements (which count paid work only), that data states that women contribute around 37% of total labour input to the Australian economy (compared with men’s 63%). However, as Leonora worked out, that 37% rises to 47.2% when unpaid work is included. When adjusted for gender-based undervaluation of the types of paid work, women’s share of total labour input climbs to 50.5%. “These numbers demonstrate that women are clearly contributing more than their fair share to the economy: it’s just that it’s hidden in the figures.”
As for the ‘oh, men work longer hours’ argument? This is silly. Because when paid and unpaid labour are added together, women’s total time spent exceeds men’s.
If you’re feeling annoyed, this following figure won’t help. Women are remunerated on average for around 45% of their total labour (that’s both paid and unpaid), while men are remunerated for 69% of theirs.
Data Matters
Leonora says that people often question how useful data on unpaid labour is. “But data is like recognition. If you don’t have data measuring something, it remains invisible.” And if unpaid labour is invisible, women have less power and less input into not only financial decision-making but wider decision-making in their households, the workforce and our economy.
“And I think this data on unpaid labour bolsters the case for more policy support to legitimise the work-care balance, whether it’s working from home, carers’ leave, paid parental leave, elder care, or disability care.” That wouldn’t necessarily involve more funding, she says, but it could help with legitimation and increased uptake.
And can we please get more men partaking?
“I think, by adding visibility, this data could hopefully also shift attitudes towards men’s involvement in unpaid care work. We really need to budge that. If we don’t make it more socially acceptable, normal and rewarding for men to be involved in caregiving in all walks of life, then it’s women who continue to shoulder it. And it’s to the detriment of men’s wellbeing too.” For example, men may benefit from more bonding time with their babies.
Also can we please reframe how we think of the word ‘economy’? “The core of our economy isn’t in businesses, factories or parliaments. It’s in how families nurture human capability, organise themselves and decide who does what. Looking after people, from birth to when they leave the world, is a fundamental contribution to our economy and society.”
Not a Niche Issue
Leonora is an economist who specialises in gender equality. But please don’t box her in with a ‘feminist economist’ label. Because saying that economic inquiry into unpaid labour is a specialist feminist issue – well, that’s a gender bias in itself.
“I’m trained in mainstream economics and I published my paper in the Economic Record journal, because I wanted to make sure this topic is considered part of mainstream economic analysis, rather than a niche issue.” There are still plenty of mainstream economists who believe unpaid labour and caregiving is not a matter of importance for economists. “They regard gender gaps in the balance of paid and unpaid labour as simply an outcome of household choice and preference – they don’t see it as an economic inequity, or realise it’s a reflection in imbalances in power.”
“They’ll push back with comments like, ‘why do we need to collect data on unpaid labour? Are you saying people should be paid for it? Taxed for it?’. They try to weaponise economic ‘logic’ to challenge the case for recognising unpaid work and care, rather than just admitting that there’s a gendered power structure here.”
Economic structures and data-collection systems have been built, rather than naturally occurring. “Because they were designed by men, they’re a function of the male mind, and the male experience of the economy.” As a result, they institutionalise and perpetuate hierarchies of gender.
“These models – these ‘thinking frameworks’ – are at odds with principles of gender equality. So they have to evolve.”
However, they’re particularly attached to one measurement. “Other economists have said ‘keep your hands off GDP!’. In conventional economics, GDP is the Holy Grail.”
But should it be?
Gross Out?
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the total market value of all the goods and services produced within a nation during a specified period.
Measuring GDP is formalised in the System of National Accounts (SNA) – endorsed by the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, the World Bank and the European Commission. The SNA, Leonora explains, directs how countries measure ‘production’ and the size of their economies. “They have to agree upon standards of measurement so that there’s consistency across different countries and different economies, as that makes measurement comparable, meaningful and useful.”
However, their definition of ‘production’ is currently limited to activities that have a price tag or wage. “We call this the ‘production boundary’: this fence of ‘what’s in?’ and ‘what’s out?’.”
“The case has been made to them that the exclusion of household working care, which falls outside of the ‘production boundary’, is a shortcoming of this measurement system.” She shares that view.
Leonora’s paper shows that unpaid work and care, if assigned a labour value, would be worth AU$688 billion per year, which is equivalent to around one-third of Australia’s GDP.
Men Taking Credit
As Leonora tells me, New Zealand professor Marilyn Waring was looking into this in the 1980s, when she went to New York to read The System of National Accounts, when it was a thick folder, before it was available online. “Marilyn was a trailblazer in spotlighting the inadequacies of how we use GDP as a benchmark measure of economic progress and activity. But I think she’d agree that, by virtue of being a woman, her voice was ignored.”
“In the late 2000s, many decades after Marilyn’s work, several male economists, including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, undertook a piece of work for the French government, looking at how GDP is inadequate for measuring the true scope of economic activity and prosperity. They received all this glory and acclaim.” Ah, the irony of a woman’s work being ignored in this.
Leonora says the SNA recently reconsidered and rejected the argument to measure and include unpaid work within GDP. “The reasons they give are ‘how would you measure it? It’s too arbitrary. There are too many possibilities in how you would approach it, raising too much uncertainty or ambiguity. Do you base it on the foregone paid labour? Or on a replacement wage?’.”
There’s this notion that it is ‘too hard’ to calculate. But, she says, the same argument was once made of other complicated transactions, such as the underground (unofficial) economy and digital currencies (like Bitcoin). “And economists successfully figured out a way to measure these.”
The SNA gives another reason for not including household working care in the measurement of the economy. “Their argument is that, ‘if we measured it, effectively everyone would be considered employed, so our unemployment rate would be down to 0, and that’s not very useful or informative’. They’re basically saying it would mess up their models.”
However, maybe their models should change. “What’s the purpose of economic models, if not to recognise the real economic activity that matters for our wellbeing and prosperity?”
Leonora isn’t necessarily advocating for including unpaid labour in GDP. “But let’s at least measure it so that it’s not invisible.”
“The SNA does recommend that you measure unpaid labour as ‘satellite accounts’, but don’t count it as part of your formal economy. The big tension here is that policymakers are still saying, especially to women, ‘we need more women in the economy’.” By that, they mean the paid economy. This is an unreasonable thing to say because, as mentioned, women’s share of total labour input in the economy is already 50.5%. “So you have to question where exactly are these extra hours of paid work going to come from?” We’re already stretched to the limit, and we deserve sleep.
It looks like the Australian time-use survey will likely be conducted every three years. “For the government and data agencies to commit to the regular collation of this information, and for the data to be broken down by gender, is a very significant step forward.”
A NZ Calculator?
New Zealand has only ever done one time-use survey, and that was 1998-99.
If Leonora had a recent New Zealand time-use survey, would she create an unpaid labour calculator specifically for us?
Yes, she would: by combining the time-use data with data on New Zealanders’ wage rates. “Because this isn’t just an Australian issue. It’s a global issue.”
“My mission with this work is to show how our process of collecting economic data doesn’t recognise a key ingredient in our economy: unpaid labour. It’s about shining a spotlight on the invisibility of this work and caregiving. I want it to be a wake-up call – to say, ‘hey, economists, policy-makers, data-collection agencies, institutions, get your act together and pay attention to this’.”
“It matters because unpaid work and care is hugely gender-patterned. But it also matters because we want to design the best economic and social policies for all of us.”
And for that to happen, calculations – and conversations – are needed.