The Invisible Engine: Capitalism's Reliance on Reproductive Labor and a Gendered Wage

Dig: A History Podcast

The 6 C's of History, Continuity: Episode #1 of 4. Reproductive labor is the labor or work of creating and maintaining the next generation of workers. This is the work of birth, breastfeeding or bottle feeding, washing dirty butts and wiping runny noses, nursing those who unable to care for themselves, keeping living areas habitable by washing and getting rid of refuse- and figuring out how to get water or where to put trash if not living with modern conveniences, cooking- including the sourcing, storing, and knowledge of food production to not make people ill. All of the things that humans rely on but that either through biology or through gendered norms, are the domain of women. Today we’re discussing the history of how reproductive labor was gendered as women’s work, the continuity of the undervaluation of reproductive labor within capitalism, and how this undervaluing contributes to the implications of gendered labor. Put more bluntly, capitalism is dependent on undervalued reproductive and gendered labor, and we’re gonna explore that history a bit in this episode. Find the transcript, full bibliography, our swag store, and other resources at digpodcast.org

Select Bibliography

Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1884.

Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman. Slavery's Capitalism : A New History of American Economic Development. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2016.

Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

Caitlin Rosenthal. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management. (Harvard University Press, 2018).

Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2012).

Lauel thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth

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