9 Work

Work, employment, and unemployment

In Chapter 4, we introduced ‘work’ as a key social institution. Under capitalism, work is reified as the most important and sometimes only means to achieving ‘freedom’. Indeed, since the industrial revolution, economic security and participation have centred largely around one’s ability to undertake formal, waged labour. This is of course, however, not the only ‘work’ that people undertake. Indeed, as we touched on in Chapter 4, ‘work’ can be understood broadly as encompassing work conducted within the formal economy (e.g., via a waged labour relationship with an employer), but also in the informal or ‘grey’ economy (e.g., unpaid care work, volunteer work, domestic work), and within the black (i.e. illegal) economy. Nevertheless, the kind of work that is conducted in these other spheres is generally less visible than that which occurs in the formal economy. We turn to this below, where we first consider the reproductive ‘caring’ work that holds society together (what Hannah Arendt refers to as ‘labour’ – see below). This work is largely unseen and devalued under capitalism. Then we consider the changing nature of work, including increasing precarity and automation.

Reproductive labour and the ‘free riding’ nature of capitalism

From the ~1960s-80s, second-wave feminists made demands for women to enter the labour market and be treated equally as employees, spurring mass feminisation of the workforce across most developed countries. Indeed, women have moved into paid employment at far higher rates than in the early 20th century, though this varies across different geographies (e.g., remote, urban), different countries, and also across different social groups (e.g., able bodied versus less able, non-Indigenous versus Indigenous, etc.). This is demonstrated in the below graph from the World Bank, which shows female labour force participation for women globally was 52.6% in 2019, though this differs across several large geographic regions (e.g., it was far lower in Latin America & Caribbean and South Asia, and higher across North America and Europe & Central Asia). Australian Bureau of Statistics data demonstrate that Australian women overall are now more likely than ever to be employed, though employment rates remain relatively lower than men, and particularly low for First Nations women and single mothers.

Globally, however, women nevertheless continue to undertake disproportionately high rates of reproductive labour and care work, and this is often juggled as a ‘second shift’ alongside employment. According to the ILO (2018a: 37), women worldwide performed about 76.2% of the total hours of unpaid care work in 2018, and “In no country in the world do men and women provide an equal share of unpaid care work”. This excludes forms of reproductive labour that are not counted in official statistics, and thus possibly underestimates its overall volume. These statistics also miss racial differences in how reproductive labour is shared, and how this is also anchored in and inflected by histories of racial oppression (Duffy, 2007). In Australia, for instance, First Nations women do more care work (PDF, 346KB), and indeed more diverse forms of care work, than any other group.

For most women, juggling waged employment and reproductive labour presents significant difficulties and, in a recent international ILO (2017) survey, was repeatedly identified as the biggest challenge faced by women worldwide. Employment also often fails to be ‘family-friendly’ for parents and carers, meaning they are more likely to either reduce or exit employment as a strategy to manage their multiple roles. The ILO reported that globally in 2018, labour market participation was 26.5% higher for men (sitting at 75%) than women (sitting at 48.5%) (ILO, 2018b: 7), while in Australia in February 2022, 62.1% of Australian women were participating in the labour force versus 70.9% for men (Australian Government 2022c). For First Nations peoples in Australia, the situation is worse overall, with 56% of men and only 52% of women participating in the labour force at the 2021 Census (ABS 2021). Women are also more likely to be working part-time as a means of absorbing additional domestic work. In Australia in 2021, for instance, ~44% of all women in the labour force were in part-time work versus 23% for all men (ABS Census 2021), and in 2020–21 men were twice as likely to be in highly paid jobs than women (Australian Government 2021). This results in a persistent gender pay gap, which has only decreased marginally (by ~0.17% per year) since 1975, and which means that women earned 22.8% (or -$22.8k AUD) per annum less than men in 2022. It also produces a situation whereby women are more likely than men to draw on social security as a source of income for labour that is not remunerated through employment.

As the latest (June 2022) data from the Australian Department of Social Services show, women account for 64% of all social security recipients on average, and this proportion is much higher for social security payment types related to caring and reproductive labour (e.g., Parenting Payments where women represent 94% of total combined recipients). Additionally, despite only representing ~3% of the population, First Nations peoples make up about 7% of all social security recipients. In neoliberal and highly conditional welfare states, like Australia, the UK, and the USA, which tend to have low payment rates, strong means testing, and intensive mutual obligation requirements, this can be a surefire pathway to poverty. Indeed, it is no accident that worldwide, women and particularly First Nations women and women of colour, are more likely to live in poverty.

As feminist scholars like Kathi Weeks, Nancy Fraser, Silvia Federici, and Carol Bacchi have long pointed to, the root cause of the problem here is that patriarchal capitalism does not make visible nor value/remunerate women’s reproductive care labour. Indeed, it is not that women are inactive, unproductive, or unskilled, but instead that the forms of productivity they often undertake are simply not seen. These persistent inequalities have led many to argue, for example, that ‘lean-in’ or ‘neoliberal feminist’ efforts to subsume women into capitalism do not address the patriarchal oppressions that are built into capitalism (Aschoff, 2015, 2020; hooks 1982, 2000).

Socialist feminist writer, Nicole Aschoff, argues that a feminism worth fighting for “is one that struggles against … capitali[sm]” (emphasis added), and as bell hooks, Moreton-Robinson and others have also repeatedly pointed to, one that is also anti-racist. That is, as opposed to the ‘lean in’ emphases of liberal feminism that seek to subsume women into capitalism, an anti-capitalist and anti-racist feminism sees gender inequality and colonial oppression as part of the inherent architecture of capitalism itself. Because these oppressions are woven into the fabric of capitalism, particularly in how the capitalist wage-labour system dismisses reproductive labour, they cannot be overcome by simply aiming for employment or wage parity. Instead, we must pursue strategies (and indeed, perhaps entirely different institutional structures) that (re)centre and fundamentally value care.

Work transitions and the precariat

In addition to changes in the gender patterning of paid and unpaid work, work across the globe is also changing in other important ways. An example is the global trend towards more precarious and insecure forms of work. This includes in forms such as:

• part-time or casual work (including rolling casual contracts, with little opportunity for permanency),
• self-employment, and
• chronically low, sporadic and/or stagnant wages.

Precarious workers are also often unable to enjoy social protections, like guaranteed superannuation, award rates and/or leave entitlements (e.g. sick or maternity leave). Carney and Stanford (2018: 4) note, “Many Australians worry about the insecurity of work, the declining opportunities for permanent, stable employment, and in particular what it means for the next generation of Australian workers — many of whom may never find a permanent, regular job.” Indeed, in Australia, the rise of precarious and insecure work is illustrated across several different datasets, as outlined in Carney and Stanford (2018) (PDF, 1.15MB). The impacts of increasingly insecure and precarious work are now felt across most industries and by people from a range of backgrounds. When other factors come into play, such as racism, sexism, ableism and more, some workers can effectively be locked out of the labour market for long periods of time.

Standing (2011) argues that precarious workers, or as he refers to them the ‘precariat’, are forming as a new class — different to the Marxist proletariat and still not a united force — but with an emerging set of political demands concerning fairer distribution of wealth, greater social protection, and a politics of time. He and others identify several contributing factors to the emergence of the precariat, including:

• a surplus of workers unmatched by a surplus of jobs (so employees increasingly have to take whatever’s offered, rather than what might be in their best interest),
• a decline in the general quality of work conditions and workers’ rights, which has been accompanied by significant declines in labour union density,
• the excesses of government policies that are directed towards supporting unfettered capitalism (often via ‘neoliberalism’), and
• the rise of technology, which has resulted in new platforms for work (like the ‘gig economy’).

The latter point regarding the rise of technology is not new, but has instead been at the centre of key changes to the institution of work for centuries. For instance, the so-called Luddites (textile workers during the industrial revolution) used to fear that machines would take their jobs and render them obsolete. Thus, they used to band together to destroy the machinery in the hope of keeping their jobs. Historically, however, advances in technology have typically displaced workers by changing the nature of available jobs, rather than making workers obsolete. Some argue that current technological shifts are different and will have more severe impacts, while others argue that the impacts will be similar and that we have little reason to fear robots taking our jobs. For more information, you might like to watch the following video: The big debate about the future of work, explained (YouTube, 9:02). 

What about those who cannot work, or for whom work does not provide economic security?

Income support and pension programs provide financial assistance to individuals who are unable to work due to physical or mental health barriers, disabilities, or other circumstances. They also provide support to those who are underemployed and for whom work does not, therefore, provide sufficient economic insecurity. These programs are supposed to ensure that those who are unable to work have access to a basic standard of living and are not left in poverty, though not all countries have these sorts of schemes, and the effects of neoliberal restructuring have also tended to undermine this objective in other parts of the world that do. 

Social security systems, which oversee eligibility and payment of income support and pension programs, tend to include a range of different initiatives that form what is often referred to as a ‘mixed economy of welfare’. Such initiatives may include:

• direct cash transfers to citizens (e.g. unemployment allowances or aged and disability pensions),
• indirect transfers via government subsidies (e.g. subsidised or free education and health care – for instance, Medicare),
• welfare programs delivered by government, or through government funding (e.g. government funding to charities to provide services to those in need), and
• services for those who are elderly, experience disability, or more.

Although tax breaks and subsidies to large corporations are generally not conceived of or framed in the same way, these are also forms of social welfare. These forms of social welfare do not tend to be problematised in public and political discourses, while social security for unemployed people is heavily problematised. This is evident in discourses that define ‘us’ versus ‘them’: the ‘lifters’ (those who work in the formal economy) and the ‘leaners’ (those who don’t work in the formal economy).