Unless the romances of productive labour and endless consumption are dispelled, the romance of investment will continue to hold sway. It has always been difficult for women to join the ranks of true believers. It is not just that our lives have an awkward way of giving the lie to romance of every kind, particularly the romance of productive labour. Capitalism has never really found a satisfactory place for us. We do not fit the traditional male worker mould, which was based on getting our shadow labour thrown in.
Unpaid work represents one of the few genuine challenges to capitalist logic.
It makes no sense at all. Those who do most of the unpaid work are women8. So it is not surprising that women tend to be the heretics in the capitalist belief system. Not all women, of course, any more than all men are committed believers. But women are the largest group who can genuinely envisage a way of life which does not depend on paid market work, but uses the material abundance now possible as a means, not an end in itself.