The sex-based segregation of labour is the key, to maintaining not only the family, but also the economy, because the economy would collapse like a house of cards if this unpaid domestic labour had to be paid for by somebody, either by the husband or the employer. Consider this: the employer pays the employee for his or her labour in the workplace. But the fact that he or she can come back to the workplace, the next day, depends on somebody else (or herself) doing a whole lot of work the employer does not pay for—cooking, cleaning, running the home. When you have an entire structure of unpaid labour buttressing the economy, then the sexual division of labour cannot be considered to be domestic and private; it is what keeps the economy going. If tomorrow, every woman demanded to be paid for this work that she does, either the husband would have to pay her, or the employer would have to pay the husband. The economy would fall apart. This entire system functions on the assumption that women do housework for love. *
Nivedita Menon, Seeing Like a Feminist
feminism, gendered-labour, unpaid-housework