The Assumptions
The following are grounding assumptions and background comment developed by the Women's Research Centre.

1. Women's work in the family and household is an integral but invisible part of the already existing economy.

• Managing the household involves food budgeting and shopping, planning and cooking nutritious meals, cleaning up, preserving food and possibly planting/maintaining a garden. Women's home maintenance work includes planning and doing daily and seasonal cleaning, overseeing or doing repairs, making sure the home is comfortable for all who live in and visit it. Women also plan, budget, and shop for most goods in the home, including clothing, and do the washing, ironing, sewing, and mending of clothes.
  
  
• Women's maintenance of health and relationships within the family and household includes supporting other family/household members in their work and social life, acting as an emotional buffer between other members and their work, community, and home, caring for family members when they are ill and preventing illness generally. This emotional support is taken for granted more than any other part of women's work.
  
  
• The responsibility of caring for children includes feeding, clothing, cleaning, transporting, emotionally supporting and keeping children safe at all their developmental stages. Women are usually responsible for locating necessary child care or baby-sitting so they can participate in the labour force, go to appointments, or have an evening out.

2. A valid analysis of the economy must include an understanding of the sexual division of labour in the family, household, and labour force.

• Women's involvement (entry, exit, reentry) with the paid labour force is directly affected by the birth and subsequent care, or arranging for the care, of children.
  
  
• The number of hours women are available to work for wages, participate in over- time, training, promotion, and relocation are influenced by their family and household responsibilities.
  
  
• The type of work women do in the paid labour force is part of a sexual division of labour.

3. Women's vulnerable position in the economy is based on the sexual division of labour.

• Women's vulnerable position in the economy is partly determined by her class position but even her class position is vulnerable since it often depends on her relationship to a man.
  
  
• Women's responsibility for the care of children (and the lack of affordable quality child care) means women working in the paid labour force who become pregnant have to make a decision about how and if they will continue working after their child is born. They may have to work part time or be under-employed, thus earning less than a living wage, becoming more prone to lay-offs and cut-backs.
  
  
• Many women with children choose or are forced to choose not to work for pay at all thus becoming dependent on the state or a partner's income.

4. All changes in the economy have different impacts on women and men.

• When an economic crisis such as a recession causes a drop in family income, women's household management and service work increases because stretching the household budget and managing of family stress is considered women's work.
  
  
• The introduction of micro technology to the workplace specifically changes the nature of the clerical and service work that is done, due to the sexual division of labour, largely by women.
  
  
• Resource development such as offshore oil, logging, and mineral extraction is often located away from settlements and family, thus the price of a paycheque for a man is often separation from family and community life.
  
  
• Wherever and however economic booms and crises occur, women are responsible for managing its impact in the home and, to a large extent, in the community as well.

5. The family is an economic as well as a social unit.

• Government policies such as taxation, family allowance, pension, and welfare are described as social policies but they also use the family as an economic unit. They are not static; they develop and change depending on government's socio-economic values, choices, and priorities.