On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, George Elgin, Suzette Haden Elgin wrote:
>
> I don't see the issue of women and wages as off topic; not at all. This
> country is run by the principles of a science fiction (or science fiction
> fantasy, depending on which version is supported) in which all the labor
> that a woman does in her own household is entirely without monetary value,
> while exactly the same labor done by "housekeepers" and "maids" and
> "nannies" and "home healthcare workers," etc., has to be paid for, becomes
> part of the Social Security system, is counted in the gross national
> product, and all the rest. Few science fictions are less credible than this
> one, but we allow it to go on in perpetuum and lift not a finger to change
> it. I think we badly need science fiction portraying alternate US societies
> in which a woman's labor in her own household (or a man's, for that matter,
> in those cases where it is a man who does the "homemaking") has to get
> minimum wage just like any other labor, and the money that changes hands
> must be counted into national statistics like any other money, must count
> toward Social Security, and all the rest. That would let us explore the
> question of whether following that policy would -- as has been proposed --
> mean the collapse of Western civilization.
>
> Suzette Haden Elgin
>
Lois Bujold's ETHAN of ATHOS makes that very poiont. On Athos, an
all-male world, the costs of child-rearing are factored into the economy
to the point where Ethan dismisses the idea of an army of clones as
costing too much to rear to maturity. He's amazed and a bit disgusted
when Elli Quinn tells him there are people out there in the wormhole
nexus willing to rear children for no pay at all except bare subsistence.
Patricia (Pat) Mathews
mathews@unm.edu
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