The commodification of female labour is one of the most ambiguous developments in human history. It directly interrogates the relation between emancipation and control, equality and conformity. Research published in this special issue suggests that female occupational integration does not lead to higher exercise of women’s citizenship. Do women need to commodify themselves as workers in order to attain equal status in a capitalist society? Or should they concentrate on imposing alternatives in social organisation that do not tie social existence to work? Or is it meaningful – or even possible – to do both as at the same time?
These are questions that still today will mainly be decided by … men. As I have argued a year ago,Footnote1 ‘work is failing us’. Male social identities still depend so much on having a ‘real’ job that there is today no path to full individuality – male or female – outside work. As we watch the masculine approach increasingly fail and produce individual and collective tragedies via ‘unemployment’, it is perhaps time to really hand ourselves over to a more feminine approach. For, women have kept the capacity of fulfilling all kinds of fundamental tasks for our very existence despite the fact that these tasks were not considered ‘work’ and were never commodified. In that sense, they are historically better equipped than men to build a diverse model of activity and coexistence that does not revolve around commodified labour. This is probably why they can still express diverse preferences regarding work while men feel almost always obliged to adhere to a single occupation-oriented model.
At that turning point, the architecture of distributing rewards and benefits in all possible forms becomes crucial. Moving individual social adequacy away from ‘official’ forms of work may not be easy but is not impossible. At a time when the first European ‘universal basic income’ scheme has been introduced at a national levelFootnote2 and even conservative political parties discuss its expediency across the continent, there is reason to believe that all things that are socially meaningful could be sources of income and prestige without first being turned into commodified labour. A real welfare system is needed to link individual trajectories, both male and female, in terms of income, pensions, care and companionship. Perhaps the issue is not whether women take up part-time jobs but why the rest of their active time does not receive as much financial and symbolic recognition as their ‘official’ working time.
Only sociologists can fathom how male domination took us as far as to consider that child-rearing and home-making provides a weaker social identity than a job. The depreciation of operating in the domestic space and the family environment must stop at some point, and that will not easily happen if men do not significantly detach themselves from an occupation-based identity. In the same vein, we must wonder why all household resources are not pooled and equally distributed among the participants? Perhaps, welfare systems that are really supportive of women should support them in what they really wish to do, not merely facilitate their social and financial dependence on paid work. Why is a salary and pension rights attributed exclusively to the worker and not formally shared with those who make the worker’s life possible, sustainable and meaningful? Are there so many of us who do not owe to others the main part of what we have socially achieved?
This special issue opens the door to a deep rethinking of what female labour should mean to all of us, not only in terms of equality but also in terms of fundamental socio-political change in societies that need to look at work differently. In terms of social identities, turning men into women makes much more sense than turning women into men. As the clouds of fear, protectionism, and obstinacy gather over Europe and the USA, we need to exert our sociological imagination as broadly as possible; this special issue is part of that endeavour for ‘European Societies’.
I would like to warmly thank Per H. Jensen who edited this special issue and all the participants for their contributions.
Notes
1 Vol. 18, no 1.
2 In Finland, a monthly income of €560 has been being piloted since the beginning of the year with 2000 recipients.