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The category of ‘family workers’ in International Labour Organization statistics (1930s–1980s): a contribution to the study of globalized gendered boundaries between household and market*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2017

Theresa Wobbe  and
Léa Renard
Theresa Wobbe
Affiliation:
Potsdam University, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, August Bebel Str. 189, D-14482 Potsdam, Germany E-mail: theresa.wobbe@uni-potsdam.de
Léa Renard
Affiliation:
PACTE UMR 5194 Univ. Grenoble Alpes, PACTE, F-38000 Grenoble, France and Potsdam University, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, August Bebel Str. 189, D-14482 Potsdam, Germany E-mail: lea.renard@iepg.fr
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Abstract

This article discusses the role that statistical classifications play in creating gendered boundaries in the world of work. The term ‘family worker’ first became a statistical category in various Western national statistics around 1900. After 1945, it was established as a category of the International Labour Organization (ILO) labour force concept, and since then it has been extended to the wider world by way of the UN System of National Accounts. By investigating the term ‘family worker’ from the perspective of internationally comparable statistical classification, this article offers an empirical insight into how and why particular concepts of work become ‘globalized’. We argue that the statistical term ‘economically active people’ was extended to unpaid family workers, whereas the distinction between family work and housework was increasingly based on scientific evidence. This reclassification of work is an indication of its growing comparability within an economic observation scheme. The ILO generated and authorized that global discourse, and, as such, attested to an increasingly global form of knowledge and communication about the status of gender and work.

Keywords

family workersgendered boundariesglobalizationInternational Labour Organizationstatistical categorization
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2017 , pp. 340 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

This article is dedicated to Sabine Ridischhauser (4 August 1962–17 June 2017). We would like to thank the editors of the Journal of Global History and the reviewers for their valuable comments. We thank the German National Science Foundation (DFG) for financing the German–French research collaboration ‘The metamorphosis of equality’ (WO 550/6-2) from 2011 to 2016, and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for funding the ‘International Labour Organization as Producer of Statistical Knowledge’ Conference, Käthe Hamburger International Centre ‘Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History’ (re: work), Humbold University of Berlin, 25–26 February 2016. Theresa Wobbe thanks the Käthe Hamburger International Centre for support during her fellowship year 2014–15, and Martin Bemmann and Gerdien Jonker. Léa Renard thanks Theres Matthieß. An earlier version of this article was presented at the International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH), Berlin, 17–19 September 2015.

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