There is a problem with how work is valued in the U.S., says analyst

Analyst Vanessa Williamson on Friday told Hill.TV she thinks there is a problem with how work is valued in the U.S., pointing specifically to how society views what is seen as women’s work. 

“I think that it’s a real mistake to equate work with jobs,” Williamson, a governance studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, told host Jamal Simmons on “What America’s Thinking.”  

“There’s plenty of work to be done in America. There are children who need raising. There are elderly people who need to be looked after,” she continued. “These are not typically very high-paying jobs now, but they’re extremely valuable.” 

“The problem is how we value work in this country,” she said. “We traditionally do not value, for instance, women’s work very highly.”

Williamson was responding to predictions that technology will soon perform jobs that are traditionally done manually, by humans. 

“So it’s possible that, yeah, the robots are going to come and take away the coding jobs, which is going to be a real problem because we just trained a bunch of people, claiming they were going to be able to get great jobs that way,” she said. 

“They’re not going to come for being a mom very soon. They’re not going to come for looking after people. So there’s plenty of work to be done in this country. The question is how can we ensure that everyone gets to live with dignity when they’re doing that work, even when it’s work that one particular version of the economy isn’t rewarding very much,” she said. 

— Julia Manchester