Work that struggles to be regarded as “real work”

From Fetish for making things ignores real work by John Kay. Kay is arguing that we let our nostalgia for manufacturing, (evoked by the art of photographers such as Lewis W. Hine), cloud our thinking. Labor in services is no more or less inherently noble and worthwhile than in manufacturing or in agriculture. As we move from one economic system to the next (from hunter gatherer to agriculture to artisan manufacturing to industrial manufacturing to services to knowledge) we almost compulsively look back and romanticize elements of the earlier systems and blanket the misery with amnesia.

by Lewis W. Hine

Kay argues from basic economic principles but he adds an observation rarely made that is worth pondering.

Most unskilled jobs in developed countries are necessarily in personal services. Workers in China can assemble your iPhone but they cannot serve you lunch, collect your refuse or bathe your grandmother. Anyone who thinks these are not “real jobs” does not understand the labour they involve. There is a subtle gender issue here: work that has historically mostly been undertaken by women at home – like care and cooking – struggles to be regarded as “real work”.

Most discussions of gender issues is so much tosh but I think Kay is right, that historical assumptions and stereotypes might cloud clear economic thinking when it comes to the services economy.