Since everyone wants to talk economy, let’s. The standard measure of a country’s economy is its gross domestic product (GDP). The GDP is compiled from data collected in a range of surveys & represents the total value of goods & services a country produces.

The GDP also includes how much we all got paid & how much we (including Government & businesses) spend. So, if you are truly concerned about the economy, then you’ll likely already be aware of, and concerned about, its woman problem. Right?

Its woman problem? That’s correct. It’s woman problem.

The formulation of a country’s official GDP figure is an inherently subjective process: “It’s a confection, with lots of judgements that have gone into its definition. & a lot of uncertainty.” - Diane Coyle, Professor of Economics

The main aim of developing a frame for understanding GDP was developed in 1934, when country’s needed to understand how much output could be produced & what consumption ought to be sacrificed to make sure there was enough to support the war effort.

One major aspect of production was, however, excluded - the contribution of unpaid housework, like cooking, cleaning, & childcare. “Everyone acknowledges there is economic value in that work, it’s just not part of ‘the economy’,” says Coyle.

This was not a mere oversight - it’s exclusion was a deliberate decision, following a fairly vigorous debate. & the omission of housewives from national income computation really does distort the picture.

Economist, Paul Studenski wrote in his classic 1958 text ‘The Income of Nations’, “unpaid work in the home should be included in the GDP.”

The decision not to include it was taken ultimately (& I wish I was joking about this), because it was considered to be ‘too big a task in terms of collecting the data.’ - Coyle

Like many decisions to exclude women in the interest of simplicity, this conclusion could only be reached in a culture that conceived of men as the default human & women as a niche aberration, an added extra, a complicating factor. A culture that still does.

The failure to measure unpaid household services is perhaps one of the biggest gender data gaps of all, with thought estimates suggesting that unpaid care work could account for up to 50% of GDP in high-income countries, & as much as 80% in low-income countries.

(We have to use rough estimates because there aren’t many people, Governments or businesses, who’re trying to conduct detailed research to gather data on the reality of the state of play. This gendered blind spot is present in numerous fields in every country in the world.)

Most of us like to think (and have been raised to do so) that the unpaid work women do is just about individual women caring for their family members to their own individual benefit. But it isn’t.

Women’s unpaid work is work that societies depend upon & it is work from which societies benefit as a whole.

When governments cut public services that we all pay for with taxes, demand for those services doesn’t suddenly cease. The responsibility of work is often overwhelmingly transferred onto women, with the attendant negative impacts on female paid labour-participation rates & GDP.

The unpaid work women do isn’t a matter of ‘choice’. It is built into the system we have created - & as such, it can & must be built out of it. We need the will to start collecting the data, & the dedication to design an economy around reality, rather than male-biased confection.

If you’re concerned for the economy in light of the events that are currently unfolding, you should be concerned about women.

If governments want to tap the GDP source of women’s increased participation in paid labour (as they should), then they have to take steps that assist in reducing women’s unpaid work & invest in social infrastructure that empowers them to do so.

The Women’s Budget Group found that investing just 2% of GDP in public care services in the UK, US, Germany & Aus, ‘would create almost as many jobs for men as investing in construction industries.... & up to four times as many jobs for women.’

This example serves to demonstrate that as well as actively creating new jobs for women, investing in social infrastructure can also increase female paid employment by reducing the amount of unpaid labour women have to do.

The sex disparity in unpaid labour is partly due to societal expectations, but also because of the gender pay gap: for many heterosexual couples, it simply makes financial sense for the woman to be the one to reduce her working hours, because she tends to already be earning less.

These issues - & their solutions - are plenty, but the economy is just one of many areas in our society where we have to work to close the female representation gap. When women are involved in decision-making, in research, in knowledge production, other women do not get forgotten

Female lives & perspectives need to be brought out of the shadows (& since we make up 50% of the world’s population, this is sort of a given). To do so is to the benefit of women everywhere, & (as many examples show) to the benefit of humanity as a whole.

If you’re interested in this, and other gender data gaps (as well as how they impact all of our lives), I urge you to read “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado-Perez. Every thing I’ve mentioned is detailed & referenced in her book, making it a must-read for all of us, everywhere.