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Disadvantages Of Productive Labor

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I am a woman living in a world where nearly everything is done by women and yet controlled by men. It doesn’t matter if that work is within the home or in the public workforce. Women are seen as the driving force behind much of the work that is being done. In nearly 40% of all American households, women are the primary breadwinners and provide the majority of the household’s income (Shaw and Lee, Women’s Voices Feminist Visions, pg. 470). But that hardly matters. Men are still seen in nearly all of the higher positions of control in this country. “Only 20 (or 4 percent) of Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs… or presidents and only 8 of these are actually in the top Fortune 100 (Shaw and Lee, Women’s Voices Feminist Visions, pg. 493). And how infuriating is that? But many men are blind to many of these inequalities, so let’s get real for a minute and throw down some knowledge. Productive labor is something that is done by nearly every person that is old enough to contribute to the world. Productive labor is the work that is done to produce goods and/or earnings to buy things needed in life (Vandenberg-Daves, Women and Work Part 1). Although this was typically something that was associated purely with the male gender in earlier times, in today’s economy, nearly all houses have at least two adults who contribute to the workforce through productive labor. There is an entirely different side to labor, called reproductive labor. Reproductive labor is generally

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