Mainstream economics disavows the invisible, gendered labor that lies at its foundation – empirics and COVID prove their theory of economics is flawed and patriarchal

For decades, feminist economists have challenged the ways in which traditional economic theories and assumptions forego any consideration of social provisioning, child and elder care, birth and other forms of feminized and gendered activities vital to the very ways we understand worth, utility, and productivity as they relate to the formation, organization, replication, and maintenance of our economies (Ferber & Nelson, 2009; Phillips & Taylor, 1980; Waring & Steinem, 1988; Woolley, 1993). Separately, but in a related fashion, feminist sociological analysis has demonstrated that the ways we theorize organizations and enact organizational life are gendered (Acker, 1990, 2006), demonstrating how the allocation of value to particular organizational processes and outcomes are gendered practices that favor men and the masculine. Joan Acker's prescient observation in 1973, as shared in the starting quote to this article, is a question around the way dominant perspectives arriving from mainstream economics and sociology still do not account for gender as an organizing principle of the economy and society—gender is relegated as an additional and different domain, beyond the interest of the largely male academic population. The pandemic has not only exposed the limitations of our traditional theories of the economy and society but also highlighted the various ways gendered labor in the form of domestic work, childbirth/care, and eldercare are the very foundations of economies and societies globally. The organization of these forms of labor has suffered an exogenous shock, to use economic nomenclature, laying bare the very ways in which work is dependent on gendered labor that is generally unremunerated and/or low‐paid and low‐status. These gendered activities around social provisioning, work, and labor literally create and anchor the economies and societies that we deem essential to our humanity. Yet in many ways, the understanding of gender as central to any notion of value, productivity and time remains squarely limited to the domain of feminist perspectives. This is the case even in scholarship that espouses critical philosophical traditions as their primary lens for understanding the social, economic, and political—and in fact, some of this scholarship engages in critical sexism in subsuming theorizing arriving from feminist traditions as outside of “mainstream” critical philosophies while centering on a disembodied approach. Meanwhile, feminist political theorists and activists have argued convincingly that the existence of women's reproductive work has been ignored. Silvia Federici's critique of capitalism illustrates that critical assessments of contemporary political economy have been overwhelmingly blind to “the significance of women's unpaid reproductive work in the process of capitalism” (Federici, 2013, np.). To recognize women's contribution to the economy historically, Federici shows how the function of the wage in capitalism created divisions between the working class and between men and women. In the 1970s, women's rights activists recognized women's unpaid labor as a source of exploitation. For the Wages for Housework movement (see, Federici, 1975), housework was a specific branch of capitalist production, that continued to render the sexual division of labor invisible. The revolt of women against housework in the 1960s exposed that the “value of labor is proven and created by its refusal” (Federici, 2013). The movement initiated by Leopoldina Fortunati, Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, and Silvia Federici refuted the model of reproduction, and from the mid‐1970s, women's private struggles were made visible, at least to those who were willing to pay attention. Of note, in the United States, the Welfare Mothers Movement worked to recognize the economic value of women's reproductive work and declared welfare a women's right. Historical divisions on the grounds of sex, class, and race remain and have been illuminated during the pandemic. Today, we see the continued omission of women's unpaid reproductive work and women's roles in the post‐Covid‐19 economic recovery. In Australia, the conservative government's 2020 budget faced significant criticism for prioritizing male‐dominated industry investment and failing to plan for women's return to work through paid childcare. In effect, the policy is based on the premise that recovery will be achieved by making sure men have jobs. This exemplifies how governments and capitalist institutions continue to ignore that the production of life is almost exclusively done by women, and that this is a taken for granted dimension of economic activity. As Federici surmises, “women continue to reproduce their families regardless of the value the marketplace places on their lives, valorizing their existence, reproducing them for their own sake, even when the capitalists declare their uselessness as labor‐power” (2013: np.). While the 20th century saw women's participation in the paid labor force increasingly significantly in many nations, the Covid‐19 pandemic witnessed a significant shift which pushed women back into the home as they lost their jobs. Capitalist organization of work and the relations of production during the pandemic have heightened the precarity of the paid employment of many women. As the world adapts to “COVID normal” workforce restructuring has become commonplace as a response, and the ways in which it affects women and the effects on the family require close monitoring. Moreover, the pandemic once again exposed the lack of attention that has been given to women's invisible and unpaid labor and the inequalities between women and men's labor‐power. In public discourse, almost no attention has been given to women's paid and unpaid labor perhaps because governments and institutions continue to be willfully blind to gender, or because they consider that it is in their best interest to continue to exploit women. And even in instances where women's withdrawal from paid/productive work in the economy to tend to the domestic sphere is acknowledged, little is being done to reorganize extant structures that have contributed to the ongoing inequalities in the formal and informal domains of work. Action is required to assert the gendered character of productive work and its contribution and value to the state and to society more generally. Redressing the “umbilical connection between the devaluation of reproductive work and the devaluation of women's social position” (Federici, 2013) is critical. There are five factors that we believe are worth drawing special attention to. First, the ways in which colonial capitalism manifests in economies requires close analysis to recognize systems of disadvantage that affect women's labor differently. Acknowledging the exploitation of women historically enables analysts to cost and recover the economic value of women's labor. Decolonial feminism exposes the impact of the crisis on individuals, health systems, and economies in the Global South highlight preexisting inequalities. As Al‐Ali (2020) discusses that specific risks and vulnerabilities are associated with intersectional preexisting inequalities in the Global South especially the wider challenges faced by LGBTQ populations, ethnic minorities, domestic workers, migrants, and sex workers. Considering transnational feminist solidarities, Al‐Ali highlights how against the background of gendered intersectional challenges, feminist initiatives, and mobilizations to deal with the crisis in specific local contexts as well as nationally, regionally, and transnationally are required. Al‐Ali alerts us to the need to attend to the pandemic‐induced “crisis of social reproduction.” Specifically, this draws attention to the effects on women as the main caregivers as well as addressing various forms of gender‐based violence, mounting poverty and limited access to resources and health services, which have become particularly devastating in marginalized and vulnerable communities in the Global South.