History of a concept. At the height of the Covid-19 epidemic, much was said about “invisible workers”. The term designated a vast set of activities, poorly valued in terms of salary and symbolism, despite a social importance that had become evident. Beyond underpaid jobs in health care or personal care, it also targeted unpaid domestic work, performed daily in homes. What decades of feminist struggles had struggled to do, the Covid seemed on the verge of accomplishing: “invisible work” was entering the public debate.
The term came into circulation as early as the 1970s. International Women’s Year decreed by the UN in 1975 marks a first turning point. That year, an international conference, held in Mexico City, initiated reflection on housework and child care. It is no longer a question of thinking about the occupations of mothers in the manner of the treatises on domestic economy of the 19th century.e century. The latter, while seeking to rationalize the conduct of households, saw in it essentially the proof in acts of maternal love. One could then deny the nature of this “work”, while recognizing the crucial role of the family in ensuring the reproduction of the workforce.
Contrary to these approaches, reflection now focuses on taking unpaid work into account in national accounts. In 1981, INSEE estimated that domestic work occupies 48 billion hours per year, compared to 41 billion for paid professional work. In 2009, the Stiglitz report estimated domestic production at 35% of France’s gross domestic product. Globally, the amount of unpaid work of women is assessed in 2020 by Oxfam to 12.5 billion daily hours, for an annual value of 10,800 billion dollars (more than 9,550 billion euros). The equivalent of the work done by 1.5 billion people working eight hours a day for a year.
Statistical visibility is not just a symbolic issue. In his test Invisible women (First, 2020), British feminist Caroline Criado-Perez denounces the cognitive biases that contribute to making a man’s world. Whether statistical models or big data, the information that would allow women to be taken into account is sometimes non-existent, sometimes inoperative when it comes to creating the health or safety standards that guide public policy. What the sociologist Jérôme Denis calls the “invisible work of data”.
You have 49.75% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.