Economic inclusion? A landing of the feminist accounting project: An Approach to Analyzing the Regulation of Domestic Work in Colombia

Abstract

This article analyzes the legislative reform that included the care economy in Colombia’s national accounts in conjunction with the transnational feminist accounting project initiated by Marilyn Warring in 1988, which claims to include the domestic work in an alternative GDP measure. The author argues that the new law creates incentives that would turn women into inefficient actors in the market, because it defines women’s work as a series of natural activities associated with motherhood and domestic work. Therefore, the landing of the account project in Colombia strengthens a legal standard of family, employment and social security law, which constructs the women as subject by naturalized the care work and a welfare as a female and not a state provision. The article concludes by showing how the current regulations covering domestic work and its associated social costs could be changed by carrying out incremental reforms designed to improve the social position of women in terms both of power and resources.