"We Are Fed up with Unpaid Housework and Sick of Altruism." Second-Wave Feminism, Unpaid Work, and Volunteering

In the 1970s, second-wave feminism launched a radical attack on established gender relations. Among other things, feminists denounced the gendered division of labor as a structural arrangement that forced women into economic dependency on men and obligated them to render services for their families and society for free. The predominant ideology of gender difference supported this arrangement with the claim that women’s duties as wives, mothers, and citizens were biologically determined by their reproductive functions and thus did not qualify as work in the strict sense of the term. In their critique, feminists argued that housework, caring, child-rearing, and volunteering not only satisfied essential human needs, but in effect generated economic value. Inter alia, they demanded that women’s unremunerated activities be made visible statistically to expose their economic significance. These demands led to the introduction of unpaid work as a new category in labor statistics. It aggregated a broad variety of activities, such as housework, caring, community services, and volunteering. This epistemic shift enhanced the visibility and recognition of these unremunerated activities. But its impact on volunteers and voluntary activities was ambivalent and in many respects contrary to the feminists’ initial aspirations to smash established gender arrangements.

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