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INTRODUCTION Borrowing from Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of the ‘second sex’, the other sex, we can sketch out the ‘second economy’, where work that is traditionally carried out by men counts, and women’s work is ‘the other’. At best, Smith’s theory only addressed half of the economic equation.
Despite the incredible progress of women’s movements, we still have not reached full gender equality For millennia, women’s role in the home has wrongfully been seen as biologically determined, and this falsehood has been used to justify women’s status as second-class economic actors. But if a woman bears a child, this does not mean that she is the one who must always take care of it. And a man is not forced by biology to sacrifice seeing his own kids grow up for the sake of his career. Yet, such false conclusions ― socially constructed ‘gender stereotypes’ ― persist even today. Over the last century, a systemic economic shift has taken place: more women than before have left the home and entered the male-dominated labour market. Women did not start to work, since they have always worked, but they changed jobs, started taking payment for their labour and began competing with men for the same jobs and positions. Since then, women’s movements and feminist voices have fought hard to make women’s work count, at home and in the labour market. Despite the incredible progress of women’s movements, we still have not reached full gender equality. Much of society remains shaped by patriarchal norms. Women still have to prove their worth in an economy that is essentially shaped by the needs and experiences of white men. Many tax systems and public budgets
still treat women as secondary economic actors. Women outperform men in education, but the gender pay and employment gaps are still significant, especially for women of minority backgrounds and women with disabilities. Work-life balance is too often seen as a concept dividing the private from the public sphere – a distinction of limited value for many women, who carry a heavy burden in both environments. Men have not entered the home to the same degree that women have entered the job market, and full-time, private domestic help is only available to those who can afford it, which perpetuates socioeconomic inequalities between working women. Even when care work is professionalised and moved into hospitals, day care centres and nursing homes, it is highly undervalued because it is carried out mostly by women.
What we need is an economy that can support and serve real people, not just the ‘economic man’. We need an economy that fosters a society of well-being for all, both women and men, without perpetuating gender stereotypes Although technology has transformed the economy since Smith, we cannot ignore that economies continue to be based on the labour of the human body: ‘bodies that work, bodies that need care, bodies that create other bodies. Bodies that are born, age and die. Bodies that are sexed. Bodies that need help through many phases of life’.3
