Gross domestic product (GDP) is a flawed measure. Economists have known this for as long as we've been measuring it.

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If I pay someone to walk my dog, mind my child, or cook me dinner, it all counts towards GDP. If I do those things myself, it gets left out, despite producing the exact same amount of value, if not more.

The real economy is not as real as we might think. This raises a host of problems, from worsening gender discrimination to calling entire government objectives and policies into question. Advances in technology could help, but only if we're smart about it.

What we're talking about here is unpaid household labour: the stuff we do for free. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, gardening, caring for kids, caring for family, caring for pets.

Australians on average spend the same amount of time doing unpaid household labour each week as doing paid labour.

If Australians were getting paid to do the stuff we do for free, it would be worth more than $1 trillion. None of this gets counted in Australia's $2.7 trillion of GDP.

How we measure production is producing problems.

First, it ignores the unpaid work that lots of people are doing which is just as valuable as the paid work being done by others.

The average Australian does 26 hours of unpaid work each week. If you're a woman or in a low-income household, it's 31 hours. If you're a parent with young kids, it's 43. If you're a primary carer, it's 48.

It accumulates the more boxes you tick. A woman with young kids in a low-income household will do a whopping 90 per cent more unpaid labour than the Australian average.

This is a problem because these people are adding significant value to the economy and society, but we are ignoring their contribution.

It's quite likely........

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