a monetary value to the time spent on producing goods and services in the household (the so-called “input method”), she estimated the amount of unpaid production by women. This research showed that about 30–35 percent of all productive work worldwide is done unpaid, which exposes the limits of current economic analysis that still focuses on economic growth in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) used the input method in its comparison of the value of household production in nations worldwide. The results showed that, globally, women do 51–53 percent of all unpaid work, and that, in industrialized countries, women tend to account for two-thirds and, in the South, three-quarters of the unpaid working hours. Men, on the other hand, generally conduct 66 percent of all paid work in the North and 75 percent of all paid work in the South. Rania Antonopoulos and Indira Hirway (2009) brought into focus the link between the level of household production and the poverty rate in countries in the South.
Nancy Folbre has criticized neoclassical or mainstream economic theory for not including unpaid care work in the household in their models, the Circular Flow Model in particular. Folbre argues (2008) that what happens inside the household remains invisible for economists, even though, in line with Reid (1934), households produce as well as consume. Besides contributing to the production of goods and services, the household, according to Folbre, also produces workers, and this production remains unpaid and unaccounted for. Besides raising children who become workers, the production of workers also generates positive externalities. Thus, after having been pushed out of the sight of economists for so long, it looks like the household is back, and moving more center stage.
Morality of the middle classes
Going back to the early days of political economy, to when the rise of the new middle class became increasingly evident, we are looking at a time period during which there was a lot of social turmoil. The old moral regime supported by the aristocracy and the Roman Catholic Church came under pressure as new forms of production emerged. Middle-class or bourgeois men opened up a new space where “men were equal” and where their debates were based on rational arguments and empirical research. Although in early Enlightenment France it was women of the aristocratic class who created these spaces at their dinner tables, they themselves were excluded from the academies where scholars and artists presented their work and explored the latest scientific discoveries, philosophies, and moral considerations. This newly emerging morality that evolved and accommodated the experience of bourgeois men would become part and parcel of the new science of political economy.
Political economy, and later economics, has always had a complicated relationship with moral reasoning, with explicit or implicit judgments about what is right and what is wrong. Aiming to be a “real” science, most political economists and economists tried to stay away from claims about, for instance, what a preferable income and wealth distribution would look like. The moral content of economics was and continues to be a highly contested topic. From the early days of political economy, however, female economic writers contributed to the debates about the newly emerging morality, reflecting on their own experiences, articulating their views, presenting their moral philosophies and critiques on contemporary economic ideas. Let us meet some of the women who made such contributions in France and England.
Émilie du Châtelet (1706–49) – her full name was Gabrielle Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet – grew up in the highest echelons of French aristocracy to become a natural philosopher, famous mathematician, physicist, essayist, and the French translator of Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees (1714). Over the course of her life, she engaged in various academic debates, among which were those on the origin of fire, the morality of pursuing happiness, and commercial society more broadly. She frequented dinners in Paris and hosted her own gatherings in Cirey, her husband’s country house. Her salons were attended by aristocrats and bourgeois, philosophers and artists. Judith Zinsser (2006), du Châtelet’s biographer, describes her life at Cirey and the community of prominent mathematicians and philosophers she brought together. In the conversations during gatherings, dinners, and walks, people such as the mathematician Pierre Louis Maupertuis, the famous novelist, playwright, and philosopher Voltaire, salon host Madame de Graffigny, and the Italian philosopher Francesco Algarotti reported on their studies of nature and mathematics, the laws of nature, and the right to happiness. As in other salons where political issues came to the table and “le querelle du femme” (the woman question) was discussed, those present often critiqued the status quo and those in power, even at the risk of receiving a “lettre du cachet” that would send them to prison. Voltaire and Diderot, among others, experienced that more than once (Zinsser, 2006).
When Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) claimed that Christian moral behavior is not a good basis for a flourishing economy, but instead would probably mean the end of it, du Châtelet was intrigued. Mandeville, a doctor born in Leiden, the Netherlands, who lived in Scotland, made the daring point that you cannot have it both ways; that is, a population of all good people living by the teachings of the Bible and, at the same time, a thriving economy. His poem The Fable of the Bees, or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits (first published in 1705, and as a book in 1714) caused a shockwave in intellectual circles. Here was an educated man, who claimed that private vices – like greed, indulging in luxury, drinking, etc. – are actually public benefits, as they are the basis of a thriving economy. His poem was widely read and became hugely popular, causing a ripple effect all over England and beyond.
Du Châtelet decided to translate Mandeville’s poem into French, as, in her words, “it is, I believe, the best book of ethics ever written, that is to say, the one that most leads men to the true source of the feelings of which they abandon themselves almost without examining them” (Zinsser, 2009: 50) In her article on this translation of Mandeville’s poem, Felicia Gottman (2011) mentions that du Châtelet did much more than just translate this text and that “transformation” would be a better term to describe what she does with Mandeville’s poem. Her own philosophical stance, according to Gottman, was informed by the ancient Greek philosophers Epicurus and Lucretius, who had claimed that man by nature becomes a social being by loving a woman and having a family, and by living in mutual dependence with his neighbors. Mandeville, on the other hand, considered man first and foremost an autonomous and solitary creature, who is oftentimes driven by his passions. These passions were seen by Mandeville in a negative light. In her translation and comments, du Châtelet shifted the balance in Mandeville’s reasoning, reimagining humans as capable of rational reasoning and of seeing passions as a positive and necessary part of being human. Her ideas about a secular ethics would inspire Voltaire’s work as well. Du Châtelet and Voltaire were involved in an intimate relationship for a period of time, which is how most people first learn about and are introduced to Émilie du Châtelet.
In “transforming” Mandeville’s text, du Châtelet stood in a broader tradition. Women writers often engaged in translating academic texts; in addition to this, they would write their own introductions, and many would also provide comments on the translation itself, expressing their personal views. In her introduction to Mandeville’s text, du Châtelet addresses both the role of the translator of a work of genius, and also gender as being a possible issue for some. In the Translator’s Preface, which is as beautifully written as it is critical, du Châtelet claims her voice and the right to contribute to scientific reasoning and to further develop her capacity to think: “I feel the full weight of prejudice that excludes us [women] so universally from the sciences, this being one of the contradictions of this world, which has always astonished me, as there are great countries whose laws allow us to decide their destiny, but none where we are brought up to think” (Zinsser, 2009: 48).
Besides a comment on the Bible, du Châtelet also wrote Discours sur le bonheur (Discourse on Happiness) (2009 [1779]) in which she elaborated her views on a secular ethics (see also Kuiper and Springer, 2013; Zinsser, 2006). Implicitly contradicting the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, du Châtelet shares Mandeville’s recognition of the importance of passions and the pursuit of happiness in one’s life. The Discourse
