Uncovering the Hidden Value of Unpaid Work: A Global History of Marginalized Metrics

Although economics derives its name from the Greek oikos nomos, or household management, the question of domestic labor, usually performed by women, has long been ignored in canonical conceptions of labor and value. But not by everyone. The canons of economic discipline have obscured the problem by systematically marginalizing the work of economists and activists who have sought to propose alternative methods of calculating the value of domestic work. This article proposes a comprehensive review of a century of research on the contribution of unpaid work to the global economy, and examines the mechanisms of exclusion of the value of unpaid work from GDP and national accounts. It highlights that the reluctance to reform these mainstream measures perpetuates well-known bias, despite generations of economists, especially women, consistently demonstrating the potential for improvement in accounting for diversity.