Unlocking the Power of Invisible Work
Unlocking the Power of Invisible Work
The Journey to Monetize Unpaid Labor
(First written March 2020 - revised in 2021)
U.S. women alone perform $1.5 trillion in unpaid labor every year.
What are the massive social, economic, and well-being repercussions of this? The opportunity cost? In her best-selling book, Fair Play, Eve Rodsky has ignited a pivotal discussion on this topic. She prescribes a groundbreaking system to reset the division of labor between partners in the home. This past January, Reshma Saujani's "Marshall Plan for Mom's” which calls for a $2400 stimulus check for moms, ignited much media attention. What's Her Story podcast hosts Samantha Ettus and Amy Nelson shared an alternative proposal on best providing relief.
The wheel of change has already begun and momentum is building, because we are finally asking the right questions.
Innovation, change and social progress cannot start unless we ask the right questions.
So now we have to ask: WHY is so much of this important, valuable, and life-enriching work unpaid and unseen? In the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by unprecedented technological advancement, does it have to be this way? Can’t we create commercially viable (i.e. revenue-generating) solutions using existing technology, new work systems and an entrepreneurial mindset to free up women’s (and everyone’s) time? What if this were the key to changing women's lives by freeing them up to earn more for their families, their communities, and society at large?
By monetizing just 1% of the $1.5 trillion in unpaid labor done by American women we could put $15 billion in the pockets of women and their families.
To be honest, that's not even the real value. The real value is that a better system around invisible but necessary tasks in the home frees up - and pays for - women's time. And that system finally inches forward the flywheel of social progress, economic gain, and greatly improved productivity.
Resource leverage is the vital energy source women have been missing. (i.e. using available resources and taking advantage of individual skills to get more done)
Every generation of women has a “job-to-be-done.” Is this ours?
What do women need?
As mothers, caregivers and professionals, women need help with the incredible burden of the invisible work that they were taught and expected to do for generations — even after they’d achieved more equality in the workplace. The second shift, despite advances for women, has hardly lightened. It has never truly gone away.
Women deserve a better, clearer system of support for workload management This includes women who, as a part of the system, want to apply these learned skills and get paid for it.
What, exactly, is the problem?
In short: inefficiency and overburden. While women can delegate to family members or hire out certain household chores and other support for daily life, there is no system for it. Finding, hiring, overseeing, and ensuring consistency creates its own time sink and inefficiency.
There’s no minimal standardization or specialization for delegating or outsourcing routine household work. And so, for most women, conception and planning efforts related to routine activities are continuous and time-consuming. Support systems that do exist are not easily accessible — or affordable — for the average family. Even attempting to get help leaves women overworked, discouraged and exhausted. The options for support become too costly.
Consequently, when women spend a disproportionate amount of their time doing invisible work, at a huge opportunity cost to women, the family system, organizations and society. They are underutilized professionally and socially at a time when their unique skills are desperately needed.
Where are we going from here?
We are at an inflection point. Undoubtedly, 2020 brought us to the last stand for a system that no longer supports the needs of women, families, businesses and society. The global pandemic required women to take on burdens they’d never imagined! Months and months in lockdown showed everyone — women, families, men, the media — that we had to change and adapt. Let’s grab on to that momentum. Let’s not forget what we went through. Let's continue to make way for the flywheel of progress and build a better system that looks at women’s invisible work — and the need to support that work — as we continue to do it every day.
Where do we start?
First, we need to be ambitious. We need to change our thinking. This won’t be as hard as it sounds. We can look at history as a guide.
During the Industrial Revolution, mass production methods became mainstream. Henry Ford challenged the status quo, when he broke down the car assembly process into 84 different roles. Ford identified the resources and approach to more effectively completing each task. He found the right people for every task. He designed the assembly line using interchangeable parts to complete the entire process.
The Ford Model T became cheaper and faster to produce, and was one of the best-selling cars in history. As a result, Ford made road transport practical, convenient and affordable for ordinary people.
The Age of Artificial Intelligence
In Marco Yancey and Karim Lahani's new book, Competing in the Age of AI, the authors embrace the future. “Whether we like it or not, digital networks and A.I. are transforming business and society.”
What this means is that organizations must redesign their business systems and operating model in order to avoid disruption and sustain success. For those who can adapt, the benefits are huge.
New organizational practices that embrace new mindsets, fast-evolving technology and divisions of labor have found new paths for better performance. They’re replacing the old ways and growing exponentially.
Why not channel our inner Henry Ford, take advantage of the technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and, like these successful industries, redesign the de facto home systems?
It is entirely possible (and inevitable!) to monetize invisible work and free up women’s time for an exponential advantage.
It’s an ambitious idea. But Americans have turned ambitious ideas into unimaginable realities before. On May 15, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a joint special session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the moon within a decade. Did he know exactly how it would be done? In a speech later titled "We Choose to Go to the Moon," he urged Americans to support the Apollo program by telling them to choose their own destiny.
Women have an amazing opportunity to choose our destinies by using the power of our collective mind, our resources and our ability to make it possible. While there is still much to discover and define along the way to monetizing unpaid work, it is time to decide to go to the moon. Together.
A Call to Action for All Women:
Here are the proposed next steps:
Start small:
What does "monetizing unpaid labor" look like, and how do we track it?
Come together as a community to brainstorm, vet, validate and design the monetization mindset and solution
Implement the mindset shift in our homes individually
Think big:
We align around the transformative purpose of elevating women to their highest point of contribution, and we commit to the following audacious goals by 2025:
Monetizing $15.6B of invisible labor;
Freeing up 1.5B hours of women's time annually;
Successfully petitioning the World Economic Forum to recognize unpaid labor in its definition of the Care economy
We have a ticket here. An opportunity to slingshot our collective lives toward a new trajectory — one that assures our agency and progress.
This ticket will not only allow us to catch up, it will allow us to re-purpose energy that we had always used to bear the burdens of caring for home and others and, instead, unleash our collective strength.
This time around, the rethinking that needs to happen is so profound that we're all starting from the same point: the current inequality of work, the invisibility of it, and the ignorance around how much we are truly doing.
The barriers?
A lack of imagination and courage to dare greatly. We need both if we are to move this generation of women and many others into the future through the monetization of unpaid work.
Dream BIG. We got this.
1 Source: Opinion | Women’s Unpaid Labor is Worth $10,900,000,000,000 - The New York Times (nytimes.com). / 2 U.S. only, $109B globally. Computed at 1% of $10.9T.