The Guardian view on women’s unpaid labour: attitudes have shifted, but the burden hasn’t | Editorial

Here was a woman who taught early-morning aerobics, cut hair by day, waited tables at night, and in her spare time freelanced as a bookkeeper and took courses at a local college. She was putting in more hours than many of the women I interviewed. But in her mind, if she had to work this hard for so little, what would it take to earn more? She could

The division between home and work remains paramount to the system we live under.

Feminism has become equated with gaining equal opportunity in the labor market, from the factory to the corporate room, gaining equal status with men, and transforming our lives and personalities to fit our new productive tasks.

On average, women around the world spend more than twice as many hours as men on unpaid work, but the range of the disparity is wide. In India, women spend 6 hours a day doing unpaid work, while men spend less than 1. In the US, women average more than 4 hours of unpaid work every day; men average just 2.5. In Norway, women spend 3.5 hours a day on

In the more developed countries, the gender inequities that exist in the workplace show up starkly and shockingly around money. The same can be said for divorce settlements and attitudes toward traditional work performed by women, like nursing and teaching, how those are poorly rewarded despite the critical part they play in our culture. It plays o