The format of a My Take is 150 words – no more, no less – to express an opinion on a different topic each week. This week’s topic was invisible work.
When something is important, we say that it counts, and if it isn’t important then it doesn’t count.
We tie value to the idea that something can be clearly recorded, which works if you are trying to budget out a building project but is not a great approach when it comes to work that isn’t based on production.
You just can’t cost out the mental and emotional load of working with people in the same way that you can raw materials, but because we can’t keep track of these costs in the same way, their significance has a way of disappearing. The work of those teaching, offering childcare, or engaging in social work, stops “counting” in the same way it should, and the human challenges they face on a daily basis get ignored in favour of arguments that can boil down to easily compiled statistics.
