If Todd Akin's absurd comment
on women's biology has you thinking that parts of the GOP look at women as if
we're another species, you're not alone. You don't have to be a vegetarian to
see feminist/animal rights activist Carol J. Adams' point, that women are
sometimes portrayed
as animals, and vice versa. Akin's ignorance illustrates a common thread in
right-wing politics, in which women bodies are simply a means to an end; after
all, the right-wing site The Daily Caller
saw fit to publish an article asking
"What are Women For?"
But as we focus on the latest outrageous right-wing assault
on women's humanity, I believe we lose sight of a larger pattern in Campaign
2012: when not speaking of women as some kind of bizarre species, economic
campaign rhetoric often makes the unspoken assumption that the
"standard" person is a male. As such, the unique contributions of, and
consequences for, women are often obscured.
In its "economic" mode, the rhetoric of both sides
tends to talk in terms of "generic workers" who are unencumbered by
issues of family care. As Martha Fineman points out in The Autonomy Myth: A
Theory of Dependency:
"Workplaces
historically have been designed with the unencumbered worker in mind. The law
only demands that women now have equal access to jobs and careers and be
treated the same as that 'autonomous,' unencumbered individual."
This rhetorical bounce that portrays women as alternatively nonhuman or invisible, creates a paradox whereby our unique contributions are
crucial enough to compel, but not valued enough to reward - as opposed to the
mythical "job
creator." However, you don't have to stereotype women to recognize
that unpaid care work is as much a part of our infrastructure as any government
program, and that it is a burden disproportionately borne by women. And with
the baby boomers aging, the care
of seniors is becoming a larger part of that infrastructure.
The argument for "counting" this type of
contribution is not new; Selma James argued
for it during the long forgotten "Wages for Housework" campaign, and
New Zealand feminist economist Marilyn Waring has long argued for an
adjustment to UN accounting systems to reflect women's worldwide unpaid work:
"The
lack of visibility of women's contribution to the economy results in policies
which perpetuate economic, social and political inequality between women and
men.... if you are invisible as a producer in a nation's economy, you are
invisible in the distribution of benefits...."
Waring's work scored
a victory with the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995, which made a commitment
to counting the unpaid work done by women that contribute to economies
throughout the world. A recent study
cited by the New York Times found that, throughout the world:
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