Global Governance of Time and Gender

Abstract

For something to count in international politics, it must be measured. Indicators and statistics are increasingly used by international organizations to quantify social issues. The book questions the rationality of “measuring what counts” by tracing the governing of care and housework labor as biopolitics. It understands the quantification of care and household labor by time use studies as a dividing technique and investigates how quantification (re)produces gendered power relations. A genealogy traces the emergence and transformation of the global quantification of care and household labor from the first time use studies in the nineteenth century to the current time use indicators used by the United Nations. The book demonstrates how quantification produces divisions and hierarchies rooted in Eurocentric and patriarchal knowledges and dissects the UN governing of care and household labor as chronobiopolitics. It contributes to international relations and political science research by enhancing the understanding of seemingly neutral and objective mechanisms of power behind the scenes of global governance. By showing how quantification processes are deeply gendered and create hierarchies, it develops a theoretical and empirical account of global biopolitics and the governing of gender and time. The historical analysis of time use surveys brings forward the original argument that the process of its formal recognition and valuation devalues care and household labor. Furthermore, the book reflects on alternative valuation practices and feminist politics of numbers.