Meaghan Furlano

in paid labor and so if everyone's going out working in the paid workforce in the formal economy as it's called you know there's still all this domestic labor child care labor housework labor that still needs to be done so it's been called like the first versus the second shift so you go out and do your first shift of paid labor you might be a cashier you might be a lawyer an actor and then you come home and you're doing the second shift of unpaid labor of taking care of kids and

And still, it's women that disproportionately take on this so-called second shift.

I heard about.

A hundred percent.

I think there's this kind of perception of influencers or the creator economy as being not real work.

And that's, I think, how trad wives often position themselves that, oh, all of this labor of creating content for you, that's not real work, but it is.

And

A lot of trad wives make some serious bank and then end up with like stay at home dads.

Yeah, well, it kind of gets down to this idea of exploitation.

And we generally think about that in like the formal economy.

But if exploitation is essentially one group benefiting off the labor of another group and like extracting that.

And so if women are the gender disproportionately doing all of this housework, child care, taking care of relatives, managing the social life, managing the relationships, feelings, then that can be said to be a form of exploitation or free riding.

I think a huge thing is cultural beliefs, cultural representations.

You know, representations of masculinity are quite limited.

And I think having more expansive, inclusive, caring definitions of masculinity, that's important.

And in the book I was talking about, that second shift book, the author says that essentially we need

greater numbers of men engaging in a movement, not a men's rights movement, but in some kind of movement that recognizes that these cultural stereotypes and beliefs of men are incredibly limiting.

And, you know, trying to challenge those.

Yeah, well, quite, you know, equal division of labor, of household labor, of childcare labor.

And what's interesting is that this book I talk about, it's such a good book.