Re:2023 Nobel Prize in economics awarded to Claudia Goldin
by tnecniv on Monday October 09, 2023 @01:16PM
(#37822721)
I also recall reading that, in the agrarian Middle Ages, women in farming communities (though also men and children to a lesser degree) did things like spin cloth to sell during the winter when there wasn’t much work to do on the farm to bolster family income during the slow season.
As those “side gigs” moved to factory production (for cloth production that happened very early), I wouldn’t be surprised if families stopped participating due to it not being economically feasible.
But fast forward on some decades, and housewives working strictly in the home doing domestic labor of rearing and feeding the family and managing the household doesn't count as economic labor because none of the results of that labor are actually being sold on the market. Yes, it's enabling the husband to be more economically productive by not having to worry about that stuff, but that's a second-order effect.