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Speaker 1: Now we've got a dollar for give for you on

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Speaker 1: how much unpaid labour people are doing for their households.

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Speaker 1: Now this relates to Australia. Unpaid labor is basically the

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Speaker 1: house housework, by the way, stuff like cock and clean

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Speaker 1: and caring for family members turns out over an Aussie.

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Speaker 1: There's seven hundred and eighty seven billion New Zealand dollars

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Speaker 1: of unpaid labor happening every year. The majority obviously is

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Speaker 1: done by women. Leonora Reese is the Associate professor of

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Speaker 1: economics at the University of canber who's done the numbers

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Speaker 1: and is with us high Leonora.

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Speaker 2: Hi, Heather, great to join you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good to talk to you. Do you reckon?

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Speaker 1: It's roughly the same in New Zealand.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I imagine New Zealand and Australia do have a

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Speaker 2: lot of similarities. And a shout out to my New

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Speaker 2: Zealand family members. I have a lot of family over

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Speaker 2: in New Zealand as well, so I think we do

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Speaker 2: have similar cultural norms and patterns. So I imagine it's not

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Speaker 2: too dissimilar in New Zealand. But also of course there's

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Speaker 2: still variation in different households.

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Speaker 1: We have to do this work, Leonora. No, you have

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Speaker 1: to wash the dishes, you have to vacuum the floors,

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Speaker 1: you have to look after the kids. So what's the

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Speaker 1: value in putting a dollar value on it?

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Speaker 2: Well, you are right, I think you make it a

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Speaker 2: really good point there, Heather, that it's essential work. Right,

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Speaker 2: So it is essential. We have to do it. It

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Speaker 2: holds our economy together, it holds our society together. And yes,

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Speaker 2: we don't do it to get paid. Often we do

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Speaker 2: it because we have to do well, because we really care,

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Speaker 2: you know, when we're caring for our loved ones or

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Speaker 2: family members with the disability, elderly parents, we do it altruistically.

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Speaker 2: But the fact that most of it is done by women,

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Speaker 2: so two thirds of this work is done by women.

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Speaker 2: If we're not recognizing it, then what we're doing is

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Speaker 2: we're not recognizing women's overall contribution to the economy, the

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Speaker 2: productive activities that hold our economy together. So it's about

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Speaker 2: shining a spotlight on it. And yes, it's essential. But

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Speaker 2: because we've got such strong gender patterns and we still

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Speaker 2: see this gender gap in pay and decision making, you know,

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Speaker 2: this is this still feeds into some of those inequities

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Speaker 2: and those biases in our economic system.

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Speaker 1: Leonora, I don't know how to break out of this though,

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Speaker 1: because frankly, we're just women are just more efficient, better

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Speaker 1: at washing the dishes, generally, better at cooking, definitely have

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Speaker 1: a better eye for a spot of dirt. So unless

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Speaker 1: we want to live in filthy houses and eat gross food,

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Speaker 1: we have to do it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, I think there are some households where, you know,

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Speaker 2: some there's an argument to be made head of that.

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Speaker 2: Maybe men are quite intentionally, I'm not saying, oh man, maybe.

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Speaker 1: Are you going to come at me with that one?

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Speaker 1: As possible?

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Speaker 2: Quite intentionally not you know, doing a high quality job

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Speaker 2: so that it prompts households to specialize in economics, we actually,

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Speaker 2: you know, we talk about households specializing and who specializes

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Speaker 2: in you know, doing that the kitchen cleaning, and who

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Speaker 2: looks up, you know, mows of the lawn, and that

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Speaker 2: can be a reflection of ability as well as preferences

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Speaker 2: and priority. But I think, you know, things are also

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Speaker 2: changing if we're saying, we're saying to women, step into

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Speaker 2: the paid workforce, invest in your education, you know, study

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Speaker 2: work hard in building your financial independence. And yet at

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Speaker 2: the same time, if household work is still so unbalanced,

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Speaker 2: then there's something, you know, something still unbalanced at home.

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Speaker 2: How we got to achieve balance at Leonora paid Work.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, I really appreciate this is fascinating. Leonora Reese,

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Speaker 1: Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Canberra. What

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Speaker 1: the blokes do is called weaponized incompetence and don't pretend

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Speaker 1: you don't do it. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive,

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