In 1975, Marilyn Waring turned New Zealand’s youngest ever member of parliament, on the age of 23. There, she ultimately chaired the Public Expenditure Committee and discovered the peculiar set of values that appeared to control not solely New Zealand’s economic system, however the financial construction of the complete world. From New Zealand to New York Metropolis to rural elements of Africa, this financial system had resulted from requirements laid down by the United Nations System of Nationwide Accounts, which said that ‘subsistence manufacturing and the consumption of their very own produce by non-primary of producers is of little or no significance’. What this technocratic language said, in impact, was that something and not using a price ticket – together with the setting, peace and unpaid home work – was thought of to be of little worth to a nation’s economic system.
Directed by the Academy Award-winning Canadian filmmaker Terre Nash, this prolonged excerpt from the feature-length documentary Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Intercourse, Lies and International Economics (1995) follows Waring as she travels to the United Nations, the place the foundations of the worldwide economic system have been set, and discusses her time visiting greater than 35 international locations, throughout which she adopted a neighborhood lady in every place via a mean day. By way of this framing, Waring argues that trendy financial measurement marginalises the contributions of girls to society, whilst, by many measures, they work more durable than males and contribute extra to their communities. Additional, she units out a sequence of prescriptions for the way, via electoral politics, coverage, budgets and even language, society can start to re-value the unpaid work disproportionately taken on by girls.
