Big Ideas, Big Dreams - Katrine Marçal

Economics Spotlight Series

Katrine Marçal is a Swedish author and journalist who has spent years covering stories of business and economics. In her work she took notice of how gender imbalance played a role in many situations and contexts. Following this thread in her curiosity, she has written two fantastic books, focusing on the role of (binary) gender and how that has shaped our economy. Her first book “Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?” was published in English in 2015 and had a huge impact on me. 

Her second book, “The Mother of Invention: How good ideas get ignored in an economy built for men” is one I’ve already written about. That book helped me see even more starkly the negative impact our female bias around flexible work is having on men. Check that out if you haven’t already. It is still just as relevant now as it was when I wrote it.

Katrine’s books are some of the funniest economics books I’ve ever read. Granted, economists aren’t known for their comedy genius, so perhaps it’s not the most fiercely contested accolade, but Katrine really bucks that trend too, for which I’m doubly grateful!

Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?

Katrine’s first book sets out with humour and compassion one crucial limitation that is deeply embedded into our understanding of the economy - the role of love, nurture and domestic labour. 

Our economic thinking goes right back to the widely accepted founding father of economics, Adam Smith, author of “The Wealth of Nations” published in 1776. Smith was an incredibly impressive thinker and philosopher who outlined a compelling view of how a maturing economy could grow and prosper. In his analysis, he used the analogy of a dinner to outline how the complex roles of supply and demand result in your dinner arriving on your plate. He reflected that, “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” 

His ideas led to our economic understanding of the importance of competition, and the dangers of monopoly, as people will seek to maximise their own interests. This analysis stands as a backbone to a lot of our policy making today and highlights how impressive he was to have had such insight and longevity. 

However, that is a heavy burden for one man to carry and can we expect that one person could possibly see the whole system, from every perspective? 

No, of course he couldn’t. 

What Marçal points out is that Adam Smith was a bachelor who lived at home with his mother. At no point in his economic analysis did he reflect the fact that his mother cooked his dinner. She had a lot to do with what turned up on his dinner plate as well as the butcher, the brewer and the baker. Was she acting out of self-interest? Of course she wasn’t! She acted out of love and care for her son. 

Why does it matter who cooked the dinner?

If Adam Smith had thought about the role of his mother in the preparation of his dinner, then our world would be a very different place.

With his mother’s unpaid, domestic work as part of Smith’s analysis, the shape of our economic thinking would be more thoughtful, complex and complete. This unpaid labour, disproportionately but not exclusively done by women in the home, has never been counted as part of our economic activity. It still isn’t counted today. 

If it isn’t counted, does it hold any value? 

Its value is enormous, crucial to everything else that follows. It feeds the country, it clothes and cleans, it cares, nurtures and comforts, celebrates and consoles. All this value has been invisible to economists, to policy makers, to politicians, to workplaces. Surely this is more than a small oversight, especially in a world where women are participating in the (paid and counted) labour market at a comparable rate to men (Dec 2023 NZ statistics: 67% participation for women and 76% for men).

What gets counted gets valued

In a world where everyone, regardless of gender, participates in paid employment, what’s the risk of continuing to ignore the work done at home?

We fail to give it the value it holds.

People marginalise the work they do at home, because it feels like the only option. That decision goes against our human values, but we do it anyway, because that’s how you get on, get promoted, avoid redundancy and pay the rent and the power bill.

Our burnout statistics continue to alarm us. We work long hours and then work follows us home in our pockets with incessant beeps and chirps through our phones. We still have all the unpaid work at home, but we do it when we need to be recovering, resting, connecting and rejuvenating.

This isn’t only a female issue anymore. It’s a modern-day, human issue. It affects everyone to some extent or another. We’ve created an economy that doesn’t count or value the basic work we all do at home. For many, especially those with caring responsibilities, their domestic duties at home are significant and often unpredictable. They are spread so thin, sometimes to the point of translucence, and for many it’s unsustainable but with no obvious relief in sight. 

How might this influence your work?

There are almost infinite ways that Marçal’s work could influence you and your work. 

Individually: It might be how you think differently about valuing the domestic work you do every day and noticing what that does for you. Does it create an adjustment in how you work and how you are at home?

Team: In your team, you could share your thoughts about the value of domestic work and ask others what would be different (and easier) if this was more highly valued. 

Organisation: As a leader, or talking to a leader you admire, you could reflect on the implicit messages that people might be getting about what gets valued, or not. You could look at the way people work, the habits that are considered normal, and what kind of boundaries people have in place to segment work-life from home-life. Ask the questions and consider what is sustainable for the long-term.  

Here’s how it impacted me and my work

Katrine Marçal has had a significant impact on me and my work. There are many other gender economics experts out there, many of whom I also admire, but there’s something about Katrine’s dry sense of humour and perspective that I find very compelling. She’s able to shift me to action, rather than get stuck in idea-land.

When I first read her book in late-2015 I had just had my second child. I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep, I was back at work in a big leadership role and feeling exhausted. My eldest child was getting closer to school age and I had absolutely no idea how I was going to make it all work. 

The mismatch between work-life and school-life frustrated me beyond what I considered a ‘normal’ reaction. I was so angry that every family across so many similar societies and countries were expected to live with and miraculously solve this systemic and structural disaster.

Reading “Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner” gave me a perspective that unveiled why I was so angry and frustrated. It was a historic oversight that had persisted for long enough and we really needed change. Now.

Ultimately, that is why I have spent the last five years focusing on creating more flexible workplaces. Not just for working parents, but for everyone, because we all have lives and things we want and need to do when we’re not at work. I want more people to have more choices about the work they do and when and where they do it.

I also created a working parents network, because these are the people often with the most acute needs to change the way we work and live. If I can stay connected with the diverse needs of working parents, I’ll be better able to serve the needs for a better future of work, for everyone.   

So what now?

Katrine’s big idea for the world is as simple as us considering who cooked the dinner that shaped our economic thinking. I hope that by sharing this with you, it’s a small contribution to the big idea that we can demand better. We can accelerate change to reshape and update our economy and our world of work within it.

If we valued domestic work, we would start to see policies evolve more quickly in areas such as:

• Paid parental leave

• Flexible work

• Universal early years childcare (similar to schooling)

• Employment agreements based on outputs, not hours (inputs)

• Pay equity claim resolution and funding (for occupations historically underpaid and disproportionately female)

• … The list goes on…

For now though, what is one simple, achievable action you can take that will place more value on the domestic work you do? In taking that one step you do something meaningful for yourself while becoming an important role model for someone else in your life. That’s how we will change this, one action, one person at a time.