ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the relation between working for money in the market and working for nothing in the household. It evaluates the prominent explanations of how the labour market is said to be shaped by household ‘preferences’, and how labour demand—the employment system—shapes a range of family relationships and needs. Questions about labour supply—employees—are also considered by looking at whether the needs (not just the preferences or ‘wants’ as revealed in market transactions) of individual members of families, from children to the elderly, affect the shape of the labour market. Superior wages and possession of more ‘portable’ career assets are associated with unequal power relations, where one partner (usually a male) is in a stronger bargaining position than the other, who has fewer of these assets. In explaining women’s lower pay rates, human capital theory concentrates on the supply of labour rather than demand by employers.