Service

The interesting thing about the much vaunted service economy is that it at last allows us to attach a rough value to the unpaid, unseen work of the home. It's easily arguable that the service economy arose as a result of the successes of feminism. Of course, the boom in singledom, wanted or unwanted no doubt helped, but there's no doubt that women working outside the home led to the rise of the service economy, with formerly domestic-sited work now increasingly done outside the home due to increased income and less time available for "women's work." The irony is, I suppose, that it's often women who end up specialising in one service task - the final frontier of Fordist specialisation.

But if a woman's work was tradtionally never done and rarely noticed and unpaid, perhaps it's time to retrospectively value this work. I'm sure I'm not the first to do so, but here goes:

Raising young children: Childcare retails for between $40 and $100 per day, ignoring the Government's offset payment. If the average is around $60, that's $12,000 a year for 40 weeks.

Cleaning, washing and ironing: If this chore was outsourced to a cleaner/dry cleaner and presser, I'd estimate an average of $50 a working week, which is $2400 a year.

Cooking: Replaced by fast food / instant meals. Estimate $10 per working day; around $2400 a year of 48 working weeks.

I think those three would comprise the main burden of work. So, using my very rough figures, a woman's work would have traditionally been valued at just below $17,000 a year. Lucky that women had men around to earn the real money.