Unpaid Work Case Study

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Unpaid work refers to the production of goods or services that are consumed by those within or outside a household, but not for sale in the market (OECD 2011). An activity is considered “work” (vs. “leisure”) if a third person could be paid to do a certain activity (OECD 2011).
Unpaid informal caregiving encompasses care and assistance provided by individuals to other individuals outside of civic or voluntary organizations (Zukewich 2002). This work is often similar in character to paid caregiving occupations such as those related to childcare provision, nursing, and home care. These are typically among the lowest paid occupations in the labor force.
Various types of unpaid work are performed by individuals in the workplace itself and often misrecognized as volunteer work. As with …show more content…

Forrest (1998) documents how women carry out unpaid work on-the-job outside their formal job requirements. These activities include cleaning, informal caregiving, serving other individuals, and maintaining interpersonal relations. The latter activity can involve empathy work: the often …show more content…

This policy brief argues that gender inequality in unpaid care work is the missing link that influences gender gaps in labor outcomes. The gender gap in unpaid care work has significant implications for women’s ability to actively take part in the labor market and the type/quality of employment opportunities available to them. Time is a limited resource, which is divided between labor and leisure, productive and reproductive activities, paid and unpaid work. Every minute more that a woman spends on unpaid care work represents one minute less that she could be potentially spending on market-related activities or investing in her educational and vocational

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