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The Day the Women Went on Strike
Podcast

The Day the Women Went on Strike

Visible Women Podcast

Tortoise, 2022


Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Hot Topic
  • Engaging
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

Unpaid labor – usually care work, performed by women – could account for between 50% and 80% of global GDP. Yet the contribution and burden of this labor remains largely ignored by economists, policy-makers and society at large. In this episode of Visible Women, host Caroline Criado Perez discusses the economics of care work with professor Nancy Folbre, government worker Khara Jabola-Carolus, and Guðrún Hallgrímsdóttir and Lilja Ólafsdóttir, organizers of Iceland’s historic “Women’s Day Off.” What, Perez asks, will it take to make care work better recognized and valued? Might COVID-19 be an impetus for change?

Take-Aways

  • In October 1975, some 90% of Icelandic women participated in an historic “Women’s Day Off.”
  • Neoclassical economic theory – still the dominant approach today – does not view care work as part of economic activity.
  • COVID-19 brought the importance of care work back to the fore; some have used this renewed awareness to push for change.

About the Podcast

Best-selling author and activist Caroline Criado Perez is the host of the Visible Women podcast, which builds on the ground-breaking research in her award-winning book, Invisible WomenNancy Folbre is professor emerita of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Khara Jabola-Carolus is executive director of the Hawai’i State Commission on the Status of Women. Guðrún Hallgrímsdóttir and Lilja Ólafsdóttir helped organize Iceland’s historic “Women’s Day Off.”