“Economists don’t tell you that more women work than men”: Prof. Jayati Ghosh

An Interview by Nayantara Maitra Chakravarty

Jayati Ghosh is one of India’s leading development economists. She is also a strong advocate for feminist economics. Prof Ghosh has been recently awarded the prestigious John Kenneth Galbraith Award for 2023 – previous awardees include Nobel Prize winners Kenneth Arrow, Joseph Stiglitz and Angus Deaton. Prof Ghosh’s numerous books include, Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, Making of a Catastrophe: The Disastrous Economic Fallout of the COVID-19 Pandemic in India, and Never Done and Poorly Paid: Women’s work in globalising India. She is currently Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was earlier Professor at Centre for Economics Studies and Planning at JNU. 

NMC:  The textbook economics that we are learning in school appears to treat the household only as a consumer, and does not enter it to look into the gender-based division of labour inside it. Why is mainstream economics, as taught in high-schools, so blind to the economic role of women’s work within the home?

Jayati Ghosh: It’s not just the economics that is taught in high schools and colleges—it’s the economics discipline in general that has been quite blind to the very existence of unpaid labour, its causes and implications. Take the standard microeconomics of utility maximisation that is taken as the basis of individual economic behaviour. It is assumed that the essential trade-off for a person is between work that provides income and leisure. This effectively assumes that there can be no such thing as unpaid work—and that is the philosophical basis on which the entire edifice of neoclassical microeconomics rests! It’s no surprise, therefore, that is described as being about “Rational Economic Man”, because most unpaid work is actually performed by women. Similarly in macroeconomics, the only variables taken into account are those that are effectively monetised or exchanged, leaving out the entire substratum of the care economy on which the recognised or market economy rests.

It’s only relatively recently that feminist economists have managed to bring this out into the open, but it still does not really inform the basic economic principles that have been taught to and internalised by most economists.

NMC: Economics does not treat work as valuable unless it is paid for in the market. We know that in every country women are less likely to work outside the home than men. In fact, the latest CMIE data says only about 8 percent of working-age women in India are employed. This means that the backbreaking housework that women do is not even visible to the discipline of economics. How can economists then claim to speak for the entire economic reality of a nation without even accounting for women’s work?

Jayati Ghosh: The definition of work has been problematic for a long time. Fortunately, in 2013, after much active lobbying, the International Conference of Labour Statisticians agreed to an expanded (and more correct) definition of work, which was subsequently also adopted by the ILO in 2014 and should now become something incorporated into national statistical systems. Work is now defined as producing goods and services, for exchange or for own consumption, including within households. This last addition is crucial. Work for payment, or employment, is therefore a subset of work.

In India (even though India was the Chair of the 2013 Conference that agreed on this) we still use work participation in the more limited sense of employment, that is work for some kind of remuneration. But even that is a bit blurred, because our data includes a category of “unpaid helpers in family enterprises” (again, mostly women). But our survey data also has categories like “engaged in household duties” (mostly care work) and “engaged in household and related duties like fetching water and fuelwood, kitchen gardening, etc. If we add all those who are engaged in such activities, we get much higher work participation rates for women in India, near 90%, and it turns out that more women work than men!

I used to argue that this reflected a system that is “gender blind”, but now I think it is rather “gender exploitative” because the economy, private employers, the government and public policies all rely on this.

NMC:  I was reading about the debate on whether women’s domestic work should be treated as ‘unpaid’ labour that helps keep wages down. But aren’t capitalist wages, by their very nature, ‘family’ wages? So, isn’t the women’s domestic work not indirectly paid for via the man’s wages?

Jayati Ghosh: Wage determination is a very complex issue, and it is simplistic to describe wages as family wages or individual wages. They reflect many different economic and social processes, not just the state of the labour market but social norms of subsistence, which also keep changing. Also, the male breadwinner model of the household is less and less relevant, not only in the West but even in countries like India. So unpaid work is precisely that—it is unpaid, NOT paid through the male wage. It’s a unique and cross-cutting system of labour exploitation that does not fit into those market-driven categories, although markets rely on it.

NMC: I watched your lectures on Feminist Economics, and I was struck by how market-forces make it difficult for companies to implement non-discriminatory hiring policies, because companies that hire women (potential mothers) end up with higher wage costs to account for maternity and child-care leave. How can market-capitalism solve this problem?

Jayati Ghosh: Markets cannot and do not solve this problem on their own, just as they do not solve so many other inefficiencies and types of injustice. This can only be dealt with through appropriate regulation that is also enforced properly.  

NMC:  A slightly different question – extreme nationalist and conservative ideologies idealise women who are ready to sacrifice their individual aspirations for their husband and family. What impact does this kind of an ideology have on the recognition of women as economic actors?

Jayati Ghosh: The whole idea of this patriarchal representation of women is to ensure that they continue to perform unpaid labour. This is also inevitably associated with lower status, often less voice and agency even within the household, in return for social approval and some hypocritical forms of veneration.

NMC:   Finally, could you recommend 2-3 books that every economics student must read to understand the issues surrounding gender and economics?

Jayati Ghosh: Two books that you might find interesting are Silvia Federici’s “Caliban and the Witch” (https://www.amazon.in/Caliban-Witch-Primitive-Accumulation-Classics/dp/0241532531/ref=sr_1_1?crid=23BQHMSSXKG32&keywords=caliban+and+the+witch&qid=1691375143&sprefix=caliban+and+the+witc%2Caps%2C197&sr=8-1) and Nancy Folbre’s “The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems”.  (https://www.amazon.in/Rise-Decline-Patriarchal-Systems/dp/1786632950/ref=sr_1_1?crid=T3GVQFY86O8U&keywords=the+rise+and+decline+of+patriarchal+systems&qid=1691375193&sprefix=the+rise+and+decline+of+patriarchal+system%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1)

Interviewed by Nayantara Maitra Chakravarty

No part of this interview can be reproduced in any manner without a citation. The citation below can be used.

Maitra Chakravarty , Nayantara. “‘ECONOMISTS DON’T TELL YOU THAT MORE WOMEN WORK THAN MEN’: PROF. JAYATI GHOSH.” De Omnibus Dubitandum , 8 Aug. 2023, artful-writer.com/2023/08/08/economists-dont-tell-you-that-more-women-work-than-men-prof-jayati-ghosh.