Maylis Avaro and Johanna Gautier-Morin, Journal of Economic Methodology, January 2026.
Abstract:
Although economics derives its name from the Greek oikos nomos, orhousehold management, the question of domestic labor, typicallyperformed by women, has long been ignored in canonical conceptionsof labor and value. But not by everyone. The canons of the economicdiscipline have obscured the problem by systematically marginalizingthe work of economists and activists advocating for alternative methodsto calculate the value of domestic work. This article provides acomprehensive review of a century of research on the contribution ofunpaid work to the global economy and examines the mechanismsthrough which its exclusion became institutionalized within GDP andnational accounting systems. It highlights how the reluctance to reformthese mainstream measures has perpetuated well-known biases, despitegenerations of economists, particularly women, consistentlydemonstrating the feasibility and necessity of incorporating unpaidlabor into economic assessment.