PLAY PODCASTS
Labour, work and productivity

Labour, work and productivity

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss labour in terms of both work and childbirth

Arts & Ideas · BBC Radio 4

January 30, 202657m 8s

Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (open.live.bbc.co.uk) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.

Show Notes

What do we mean when we talk about productivity?

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss labour in the context of both work and motherhood: what the language of childbirth tells us about how mothers and their bodies are viewed today; how the language of production and reproduction is used in the public and private contexts of the workplace, in macroeconomics, in the labour ward and at home; and the current public debates about parental and domestic labour, the maternal pay gap and the 'productivity puzzle'.

With: John Callanan, Reader in Philosophy at King's College London Beth Malory, Lecturer in English Linguistics at University College London Patrick Foulis, author and journalist Corinne Low, Associate Professor of Economics at the Wharton School and author of Femonomics Helen Charman, Fellow in English at Clare College, Cambridge and author of Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood

Producer: Eliane Glaser