A Woman’s Work is Never Done
Domestic table setting: vintage linen and crockery with decals, fabric and paper circles, soundscape
Retirement from paid work doesn’t mean a move to greater personal leisure time for most Australian women. Because women do the bulk of unpaid domestic and volunteer labour in the economy, the idea of retiring is more often associated with higher levels of unpaid caring work – for grandchildren, partners, other family members, and the community. This unpaid work has an impact on women’s financial security later in life.
The panel shows a woman’s potential working life in rows of years. Each row has 12 circles, each representing a month’s wage. The empty circles represent paid work. The half circles and fully filled in circles show how a typical working mother’s time is shared between paid and unpaid work, including home and child care, elder care and partner care. The accumulated savings that are available for retirement income are represented by the “macarons” in the centrepiece on a nearby table, set for a retirement celebration.
Economists continue to exclude women’s unpaid work from measures of activity in the economy such as GDP. The value of this unpaid work is calculated by PwC Australia at more than $500b in 2017 — a figure that represents more than 30% of the GDP. The work is largely performed by women but not recognised or rewarded financially.
As a result of this, over 30% of women in Australia retire with no savings. This financial inequlity impacts women’s ability to live safe and comfortable lives in retirement. In fact, women over the age of 45 are the fastest growing group of homeless people in Australia.
“I am feeling moved and deeply challenged - thank you. This work is so important.”
Design
The challenge of representing the financial reality of women’s unpaid labour is symbolizing the whole working life. When I saw the circle fabric, I thought it would be perfect to represent months in a year, and rows of years. I cut out circles to represented monthly wages, either in full or in part, and used some of them to represent retirement savings in the piece called Retirement Tea Party.
In each remaining circle, I designed a motif to represent the kinds of unpaid labour that women do in their domestic lives: baby care, toddler care, school children care, elder care, grand child care and partner care. Finding a laundry basket that had a similar grid of circles made the perfect “destination” for the infiniteness of women’s unpaid labour.
Materials
The fabric is a fashion remnant, dense with machine embroidered eyelets. Originally cream coloured, I dyed it a delicate shade of pink-apricot. It is an old-fashioned “old lady” colour: pastel and gentle on the eye. The tiny motifs are printed on silk organza and cut out so that each one could be stitched inside each circle.