Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
In 1975, Marilyn Waring became New Zealand’s youngest ever member of parliament, at the age of 23. There, she eventually chaired the Public Expenditure Committee and learned the peculiar set of values that seemed to govern not only New Zealand’s economy, but the economic structure of the entire world. From New Zealand to New York City to rural parts of Africa, this economic system had resulted from standards laid down by the United Nations System of National Accounts, which stated that ‘subsistence production and the consumption of their own produce by non-primary of producers is of little or no importance’. What this technocratic language stated, in effect, was that anything without a price tag – including the environment, peace and unpaid domestic work – was considered to be of little value to a nation’s economy.
Directed by the Academy Award-winning Canadian filmmaker Terre Nash, this extended excerpt from the feature-length documentary Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics (1995) follows Waring as she travels to the United Nations, where the rules of the global economy have been set, and discusses her time visiting more than 35 countries, during which she followed a local woman in each place through an average day. Through this framing, Waring argues that modern economic measurement marginalises the contributions of women to society, even as, by many measures, they work harder than men and contribute more to their communities. Further, she sets out a series of prescriptions for how, through electoral politics, policy, budgets and even language, society can begin to re-value the unpaid work disproportionately taken on by women.
video
War and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
video
Information and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
2 minutes
video
Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
15 minutes
video
Biotechnology
It’s our responsibility to engineer corals that can weather the world we’ve created
11 minutes
video
War and peace
A century later, can poetry help us make sense of the First World War’s horrors?
9 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
The little Peruvian guide to public speaking that conjures up a grandiose world
7 minutes
video
The ancient world
Archeological discoveries animate the life of the warrior queen who took on Rome
6 minutes
video
Biography and memoir
Preserving memories of a Japanese internment camp, and the land where it stood
8 minutes
video
Making
Trek to a remote Himalayan village where artisans craft teapots fit for kings
11 minutes