How feminist economics could change Europe
Imagine what would happen if our political, cultural, and economic leaders began to reconsider what it means to create “value” in Europe. What if we were supported to rest, to look after our families, and to enjoy ourselves and our communities as much as we’re encouraged to generate capital? What would it look like for Europe to translate its wealth into greater wellbeing?
These are some of the big questions raised by Emma Holten, two-time Europeans guest and author of the book Deficit: How Feminist Economics Can Change Our World, now being translated into a dizzying number of languages. This week, we’ve devoted the entire show to our conversation with Emma about what “feminist economics” means and how it could change things for the better – not just for women, but for everyone.
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How feminist economics could change Europe
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Hello, and welcome to The Europeans, the podcast that dares to believe that two people chatting about European news can be more than just a sleep aid. Though, if you are using us to drift off, your dreams this week will be filled with images of alternative societies led by feminist economics. That's our big topic of the week.
I'm Dominic Kraemer in Amsterdam and I'm speaking with fellow Eurodreamer Katy Lee in Paris. Hi, Katy. How's it going over there?
KATY LEE
Do you really think people are falling asleep to this podcast?
DOMINIC KRAEMER
I mean, I hope so. Because, I mean, my favourite podcasts are my falling asleep to podcasts.
KATY LEE
Oh, you think it's flattering rather than suggesting that we have soporific voices that put people to sleep?
DOMINIC KRAEMER
I do think there's an element of flattering to it. Although, to be honest, I don't think people are falling asleep to this because we too often talk about things that they don't want to experience in their dreams, like geopolitical dramas.
KATY LEE
Always fun. The Good Week, Bad Week jingle is also sure to wake people up. In any case, if you are falling asleep to this right now, wake up because we have a great conversation for you.
Yes, yes, even if it's midnight, up you get. It's so good, in fact, this conversation that we have decided to make it the whole of this week's episode. Should I tell you about this week's guest?
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Yes, please do. This is one of those ones where if I was falling asleep to it, I would pause it and be like, no, no, no, I'm going to save this for tomorrow.
KATY LEE
This is for the morning, put on a nice history podcast instead. Yes, this week's guest, she is actually someone whose voice will be familiar to the truly diehard listeners of the Europeans because she's been on the show before, all the way back in 2020, if you'll believe it.
Her name is Emma Holten. She is from Denmark slash Sweden. And when she came on the show all those years ago, it was to talk about something pretty different to what she's talking about today. Emma came on the show after her online accounts got hacked and naked photos that she had sent to her boyfriend at the time got leaked onto the internet and viewed by many strangers.
That conversation was about how this horrible thing happening to her had actually galvanised Emma into becoming an activist. And she has continued with that activism in the years since that conversation. But her work has also shifted.
She's become increasingly interested in the way that women get kind of cheated by our economy. And in 2024, she published in Danish a book called Deficit. It's about how these injustices get built into our economy.
It's also about how those injustices are actually reinforced by the study of economics, by the entire way that we think about what the economy is and what contributes to it. The book is now available in several languages. It has won a bunch of prizes.
We've both read it. Well, we've both actually consumed the audio version. What did you make of it, Dominic?
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Audiobook listening is still reading apparently. It does the same thing to our brain. Anyway, I thought it was really an excellent read slash listen, partly because she just has such a good voice for audiobook reading.
KATY LEE
Doesn't she? I found it really jarring that I'd be listening to Emma talking about all the horrible ways in which women had been wronged throughout history, put on trial for witchcraft, for example. And I just be listening to it thinking, she's got such a lovely voice.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
I also really enjoyed that the book is sprinkled with quotes from lots of clever philosophers, but also wonderful people like Ariana Grande and Samantha from Sex and the City.
KATY LEE
Yes, I love that. There's such a good kind of highbrow lowbrow quality to this book. Like there's bits about John Locke, and then there's bits about Britney Spears.
I love this book. There is so much to think about, packed into really quite a slim volume. Some of it will be stuff that we all know about.
We all know, for example, that women do the bulk of the unpaid care work in our society.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
We do all know that. But do we all think about that very often? I don't know.
KATY LEE
That's true. That's true. I mean, if you don't think about it, then I regret to inform you that it is still true in the socialist paradise of Europe, unfortunately.
I was reading a Euronews article from last September, which said that across 23 European countries, women do about 86% more unpaid work than men. I find myself thinking about that kind of thing quite often. What I hadn't thought about so much was how the way that we think about the economy reinforces those inequalities, and more generally, how it tends to treat caring for others as really a kind of afterthought, more than something that should be thought about as actually part of the economy.
You should all definitely read this book. But if you're still only convincing, maybe this chat with Emma will persuade you. We'll be back at the end for a quick debrief and a request for your help, actually, listeners.
Dominic's trying to build some kind of, what is it, like a kind of database of European politicians that are going to rescue us? Is that what it is?
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Yeah, something like that.
KATY LEE
Something like that. Anyway, that is coming after this conversation with the brilliant Emma Holten.
[MUSIC]
KATY LEE
Emma, it's so nice to have you back on the show.
EMMA HOLTEN
It's so wonderful to be here again.
KATY LEE
So we last spoke to you, what feels like a lifetime ago, back in 2020. And at the time you came on the show to talk about your work as a campaigner on online consent.
How did we get from there to here?
EMMA HOLTEN
Ask my psychoanalyst. Yeah, so I've done a lot of work and have since 2014 on digital sexual violence. So I was a victim of non-consensual image sharing way back in 2011.
I did a lot of feminist work about victims' rights. And now I'm working on feminist economics and care work. And I think there certainly is a connection.
It is, how do we take care of one another? Who do we decide who is worthy of care, who is not? And why are we in a situation in our part of the world, Europe, where we have such endless wealth?
We've been so successful at increasing GDP, making a lot of money, you know, compared to the rest of the world. We are by far the richest part of the world in many ways. Yet we're also a continent with extreme levels of stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, lack of connection.
And those issues seem to be increasing. And I think I was very interested in that paradox, like why are we not able to translate all this wealth into more well-being? And we haven't been for the past 25 years, we haven't really seen any significant increases in well-being in Europe.
And I think having been a person who has suffered a lot on this continent, and felt a lot of loneliness and despair, I was interested in how that happens and what it means.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Well, I'd like to throw that rhetorical question right back at you. How did writing this book change your understanding of why care work is so badly paid?
EMMA HOLTEN
I come from a feminist tradition. So I think that was kind of my initial way into this question. And I read a headline in a Danish newspaper in 2020 that said that women were a net deficit to the economy.
And I was like, how do they get to this? This seems odd to me. Because you know, it presented value creation is very simple to calculate, you know, everyone knows who creates value and who doesn't.
So I kind of pulled that red thread. And what I found going down that rabbit hole was that all through economic history, and up until now, up until the models that we use today, in finance ministries all over Europe, in the EU fiscal compact, in the most important economic documents, care work and leisure time and time with family and time for rest, are seen as expenses as non value creating activity. So all of the things that I think are some of the most important for human flourishing, are seen as something we actually should have less of.
So it's less leisure time we have, the richer the country looks, the more money we spend in H&M makes us rich, but the money we spend on a healthcare worker makes us poorer. And that took some years to kind of follow that thread. But as soon as I understood that the jigsaw started falling into place, and I started understanding that there is a fundamental issue with how we talk about value and what is actually valuable in the economy and to people.
KATY LEE
Yeah, I mean, just speaking for myself, I realised fairly recently that I really have spent most of my adult life unconsciously believing that paid work is somehow a more valuable thing to do with one's life than caring for others and the unpaid part of the economy, like being a full time parent, for example. And I feel so ashamed about that. And I also feel really ashamed that it took, for me, it took becoming a parent to realise that like, I couldn't see how important this work is for all of us and how freaking hard it is, until I did it myself.
And it really felt like I was emerging from a form of brainwashing, like the story that we have told ourselves for so long, that care work really isn't that valuable. It is incredibly deeply ingrained in our societies. So what do you think we could do to undo that idea?
EMMA HOLTEN
Yeah, I think I had the same experience as you. When I started this book, I was 28 or something, it took me seven years to write it. And I was very afraid of having children.
I was scared of it. And I associated with unfreedom, with being less valuable in society, with being less important. And I really wanted to confront that very shameful feeling myself, why am I afraid of becoming a woman in a way?
Why do I find mimicking men's lives to be more valuable than the lives that women have traditionally led? And I think a lot of people emerge from my book with a lot of understandable anger. But it is also a hopeful book, because what I show is that we've been taught that economics is like physics or chemistry.
So there's no other way to do it. You know, what you grew up with Katie and what I've grown up thinking, you know, that's just what value is. But what I show is that how we think about economics, how we think about value is affected by culture, by activism, by institutions.
It is actually something that we can interact with and change. And I think for many of us, both the climate crisis and what I would call the care crisis, which I think we are in now, are really pushing these questions to the fore of how should we define wealth in the next 50 years? What does it mean to be a rich country?
And I think it is possible to change, but it is a huge endeavour, because these things are inside systems that are difficult to penetrate, difficult to understand. And that look, and I think this is the most important thing, that look apolitical. And I think one of the most important points in my book is that sometimes when we do activism, both in feminism and in climate, we tend to try to affect politicians or affect the public discourse.
But what I show is that actually within economic bureaucracy, there is politics. It's hidden away, but it's in there. And it's in the models, it's in the trade deals, it's in the GDP.
And we also need to be present in those spaces to really transform how we do politics and how we prioritise in politics.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
I feel a bit embarrassed to ask this question as the only man in this conversation.
EMMA HOLTEN
Go right ahead.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
In the book, you make the case that feminist economics doesn't only benefit women. In what way does everyone benefit from feminist economics?
EMMA HOLTEN
I think that is a really central question, because I think for a long time, feminism and the type of feminism that has been pushed forward by the EU, by business, by politics, has been women living men's lives. And I think we all understand why, right? We wanted women to work also within feminism, to have their own money, to vote, to get educations, all these types of things.
But when I look at men's lives today in Europe, I ask myself, how enviable are they really? We are seeing extreme unhappiness among men, frustration, anger, lack of meaning, lack of social relationship, worse health outcomes, more suicides, more violence. And it's a central point in my book that I'm not really sure what gender I feel the most sorry for.
I feel sorry for both genders now, but in different ways, because women are getting poor from doing care, right? It's making them poor to work in the care sector. The salaries are low.
It's undisrespected. It's difficult work that does not have a high status. They're getting poor from becoming mothers.
But if you look at men's lives, I think many women do not envy it, despite men being richer on a monetary level. In many ways, I'm more curious about a world where men's lives look more like women's than the other way around, that we start seeing that actually the lives that women have traditionally led, being with family, engaging with local community, engaging with friends and family on a more intentional level, is actually a life that is tremendously valuable and important. And right now, men are just so chained to the role of breadwinner, to the role of worker, and so much of their identity and value in society is connected to them being successful at work.
And I think that is a hugely stressful and unhappy place to be in. And I think that right now we're doing men a disservice as well from not being able to care for themselves and others.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Yeah, I love this thing you wrote about the fact that there's been a lot of focus on the right of women to be able to go to work. But also what about the right to be able to stay at home and choose to be a caregiver and choose to experience family love? That's also something I wish for men as well.
EMMA HOLTEN
Yeah, and I think we have this idea that, you know, men work because they don't care about their family. They prefer their career. I think this is a huge misunderstanding.
I think for many men, their paid work is how they express care. So they will say, you know, I'm working to make sure that there will be new football boots, that there will be maybe a summer trip in July. And thinking that men work so much because they don't care about their children, I think that is a huge misunderstanding of how men perceive their own lives.
But right now we've created a society where everyone must work as much as possible. And that is perceived as the desire of people and as the desire of the economy. But right now we think of work as value creating, but work can also destroy value.
By taking time away from family and rest, by using up natural resources that might be better used other places. And I think this idea of looking at work as not something that always creates value and leisure time as not something that always destroys value is kind of a central point in how I think we can criticise an economy and look at wealth differently.
KATY LEE
You cite economists all the way through your book who are critical of the mainstream economic thinking that has influenced our society so much over the last couple of centuries. Really, you know, the idea that everything has to have a price, that unpaid care work somehow doesn't count. I am actually married to an economist and he was really curious to know what you think the most useful thing working economists today can do to help people think differently about all of this.
Like, would you like to see economists putting more emphasis on certain areas of study or is it more just about how they communicate the work that they're doing? Which, you know, in many cases, as you touch on in the book, is covering these kind of issues.
EMMA HOLTEN
Really good question. So first of all, and I say this with a lot of love and kindness, but some humility with regard to their own discipline, knowing their own limits. So for example, if a politician asks you, should we spend a billion euros on hospitals, yes or no?
You should say it as an economist. I'm very good at the cost of hospitals. But if you're asking me how many doctors should we have and how should we organise the work and where should it be, maybe you should ask a health researcher who can supplement my knowledge.
Because right now, we're using economists for every question, for education, for health care, for child care, for climate. And I think like any discipline, it has limits. And what I show in my book is that up until extremely recently, and I would say still, care work is just not something that has garnered that much interest within the economics profession.
You don't get fancy professorships and lots of funding from studying, you know, parental relationships with children. You get that from studying inflation and financial markets.
KATY LEE
But there are people studying this stuff, though, to some extent.
EMMA HOLTEN
For sure.
KATY LEE
As you say, it's relatively new.
EMMA HOLTEN
It's relatively new, and they're trying to come up. And I think they are also struggling sometimes to be truly heard in the places where it matters, which are the big macroeconomic questions. You know, how should we spend billions of euros?
When you ask that question, you don't ask the microeconomist doing these small types of research on family dynamics, for example, you'll ask someone who does macroeconomic modelling. And I think there's also right now, a little bit of a fight within the economics profession about how it should look. And I think this has been going on since the financial crisis.
PKT obviously has been one of the people raising this question, but more and more people are doing it. Asking, are we spending our time on the right things? Are we really understanding what's going on?
Or are we too focused on areas of the economy that maybe are not where we should be? So I think understanding the limits of your own profession, and letting other professions supplement yours, other types of research supplement yours, we could get a much richer image for policymakers. Because what I'm seeing all over Europe is that policymakers are looking at an economic calculation.
And that calculation does not necessarily taking into account human flourishing, education, social relationships and local community. So I think that would be the first thing. And I think the second thing would be question where your ideas come from.
I think that's been something that has been revelatory to me is that in a lot of economics education, you're not necessarily taught about historically the internal fights that have been in your discipline. They are taught these models as if they're physics or chemistry. And there's no other way to do it.
But all through economic history, there's been a lot of internal disagreement fights about how to do things. And I think that's how it should be in social science. But some of those ideas have gotten to rise so much to the top that even criticising them within the profession is seen as like sacrilege or blasphemy.
And I think that is not healthy for social science. So I think more internal disagreement on the fundamentals of how they work, and more openness to other disciplines, I think that would make them and certainly all of much smarter about how the world really works.
[MUSIC]
KATY LEE
We are very sorry to briefly interrupt the conversation with Emma to ask, are you enjoying this conversation? And if you are enjoying it, would you maybe consider helping the Europeans to fund the production of more of these kinds of podcasts?
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Yeah, while we're talking about the work in our economy that goes undervalued, it's no secret that the big money in podcasting is going to celebrity interview podcasts. And let's face it, the kind of podcasting that we do is never going to make us rich. Sorry, Katie.
But we do think it's important. What we try to do here at the Europeans is to make sense of what's happening on this continent in a way that feels approachable and human and maybe even sometimes fun. So if you'd like there to be more of that kind of thing in the world, we'd love it if you'd consider becoming a supporter of this podcast.
KATY LEE
There are a bunch of different little things that we offer depending on how much you're able to pledge from access to our community chat, where you can talk to other fans of the show, all the way up to getting a vintage tote bag featuring this podcast's original, very horrible artwork. And actually, if you're in the 12 euros a month tier, brace yourselves, because quite a lot of you are going to be getting a voice memo from Dominic and me this week. It is super easy to sign up.
All the information is at patreon.com forward slash Europeans podcast.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
This week, big thanks go to our latest supporters, Eric, Carolyn, Nina, Saskia, Jim and Donna, and also Leslie for increasing her donations. Thank you so much to you all.
KATY LEE
All right, back to our conversation with Emma.
[MUSIC]
DOMINIC KRAEMER
As a continent, Europe traditionally sees itself as the home of well functioning welfare states, or at least welfare states that maybe work a little bit better than elsewhere. Did you find from your research that the policies of governments across Europe are broadly better at recognising the contribution that care work makes to the economy than countries elsewhere, or really not at all?
EMMA HOLTEN
I think there's a historical perspective here for sure. So after the Second World War in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the way we looked at the economy was completely different than how we look today. So that was called the Keynesian period.
And that was when a lot of the big welfare states all over Europe were built. At that point, you saw something like hospitals or schools as an investment. So you said, okay, if we want smart people, healthy people, that is going to make us rich.
And it has it really has, I think, many countries in Europe are still the envy of the world for a lot of feminist economists all over the world, they'll come to Denmark or Sweden or France, and look at how we do childcare, for example. But what happens at the end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s, is that new economic ideas start to supplant the old Keynesian ideas. There are some big economic crises, and a new view of macroeconomics kind of comes to the fore.
And that is a way of looking at the economy where the only thing that creates value is trading in the market. So when we buy and sell things in the from the private sector, that is where value comes from. And this completely changes the political landscape.
And I think a lot of it has to do also with fall of the Berlin Wall in 89. Because there comes this idea that it's the end of ideology. And now we just have to do smart economics and, you know, research based policy.
And that's a great idea. I agree with research based policy. But what happens is that the science of economics, and some ideas within scientific economics become cloaked as apolitical advice, when really, they have actually quite a specific vision for what is good policy and what isn't.
And that becomes very, very powerful. And I think right now, in all countries in Europe, we are seeing a polarisation, both on the left and on the right. So we're seeing an extreme frustration with the political system.
And the way I see it is that both the anger on the left and the right comes from this sense that nothing ever changes. All the politicians are the same. I can't get anything to happen.
They're just bureaucrats. And actually, when you look at how the political system works, and how the economic ideals have been completely baked into politics, it is actually quite an astute observation that they are very similar. They're all working for the same thing.
And I think when the democracy is not working, it creates frustration. And that's really dangerous. Radicalisation on both fronts, both left and right is dangerous, because people stop trusting the system.
And I think what I try to do with this book is to also reintroduce ideology, that you cannot ask an economist what is valuable. That is a democratic question that you must ask your citizens. What is a good life?
That is what we vote on. And I think right now, citizens don't feel that they're voting on that. There aren't different visions of a good life.
Everyone's doing the same thing. And I think that is really harmful. And I'm also trying to introduce that, you know, we can have a different vision of a good life.
And this book is made for people, no matter where they are on the political spectrum, that if you think we should have more time for family, for rest, for nature, for each other, that is a viable option. We can do that. But we need to rethink how we organise politics if we do that.
KATY LEE
Despite all of the frustrations that we've had growing in recent years, are there particular recent policy initiatives that have been introduced across Europe somewhere that you've come across while writing this book that made you think, okay, this policy is something that is doing something concrete to better reflect the value that care work brings to society?
EMMA HOLTEN
I think I'm going to give a little bit of a like an anti-intuitive answer. But bear with me. So right now, Germany is spending billions and billions of euros investing in weapons manufacturing and green energy.
KATY LEE
And where is it going?
EMMA HOLTEN
Yeah, I know. It's a winding road, but bear with me. And what is the big change in that?
And what really is a big change in economics is the idea that public investment is something that can create value and something that can strengthen the economy. And actually, in the EU fiscal compact, if you borrow money from the EU, or from the IMF for weapons industry, it is seen as an investment. But if you do it for schools or hospitals, it is seen as an expense.
I'm trying to be a glass half full girl here, right? And I'm hoping that this openness to the idea of public spending as something that contributes to the economy, something that creates value, is something that down the line, also can start affecting other spheres of the economy, such as care, etc. In Denmark, right now, we have such severe issues with youth mental well-being, that we are also starting to see an economic worry that is manifesting in an interest in care.
In saying, you know, if, you know, every 10th of a youth are not showing up for school, because they're so depressed and stressed, that's going to really impact them as a labour force. And I think this is what I say when I say that care is what makes all other work possible. For a long time, we've been thinking, you know, it's expensive to invest in care, we don't have the money.
But I think now we're starting to see it's also very expensive to not invest in care, to not have people feeling well, doing their best, feeling loved and respected and appreciated and feeling healthy. So I think we are starting to see the state play a new role. I think China also plays a big role in this, they've been very, very skilled for all their faults in using the state for creating a very, very effective economy.
And I think we're going to see the state play a much bigger role than they have been in the economy in Europe in the coming 20 years. But I hope they're not only going to be building guns and tanks, but also building healthy and happy people. That's what we're going to be fighting for now.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
I didn't expect your optimistic answer to come from a huge, huge, massive investment in weapons. But I understand your point.
EMMA HOLTEN
I'm trying to keep my head above water in this geopolitical climate. And it is a struggle, I must say, but I'm trying.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
We're all doing our best. Yeah, I wanted to ask about one more specific example that I found really interesting in your book, which was this thing about national holidays. And this like justification in euros that the Danish government gave when cancelling a national holiday in spring effective 2024.
Like there were these huge economic claims about how much money the Danish economy would make by cancelling this holiday. But what were these political decision makers missing when they made that decision?
EMMA HOLTEN
This is a very classic thing. I think this is going to be start happening all over Europe. We're seeing it with pensions with holidays with specific you know, allowances, you know, the politicians coming out saying there's no money we can save X amount of billions from doing this.
And they did this in Denmark with with store bill date, which was a one day holiday that will usually fell on a Friday. So you got a weekend. And now a couple of years in, we're seeing that it did not at all generate all the extra work that was perceived to be done.
It actually didn't even generate anything as far as they can see just one day. However, what it has done is created huge social chaos. Because this holiday was an extremely important holiday for doing you know, confirmations, which we do in Denmark, when young people are Christian, when they are about 16, they'll confirm their faith, and they would have these big parties, they are now now there's a day list to do that, where people are off huge social and sporting events were often on this day, because people had the day off, and all of those things are now disappeared. And I think that for me is a perfect example of we have a very concrete language for the cost of this day, right?
That's the loss of work, we have the hours, and we have the salaries. And that gives us a sense of very hard knowledge. But all of the more abstract value of families coming together of doing sports, or having big sporting events of, you know, having these big markets in the spring, that value is completely invisible.
And it was not even really that big a part of the debate that we were losing something. And I think this is what I see happening all over the political and social system, is that we do these calculations. And it looks like, wow, we're going to be saving all this money.
It's amazing, we're going to be so rich. But we're losing things that cannot be measured or seen. So we're constantly losing things that are invisible, a little bit of extra time that the nurse has with an elderly person, maybe a person with a disability can get an extra walk, these things are disappearing.
And it looks like we're not losing anything, but we're getting poorer all the time. And I think this is the paradox that we're seeing that the economic line is going up. So the money are being saved, we're getting richer.
But the social and human costs of what is being done is not registered anywhere. But we feel it in our bodies and minds, right? I think many people say, we have gotten poorer, but I can't really put my finger on why I don't feel better.
And I think that was the kind of the sense of loss that I wanted to articulate with this book, that actually, if you feel that you feel poor in your soul, in a way, you're not wrong, you're having a very concrete experience of something that is happening, but it's not being registered or described anywhere.
KATY LEE
We are coming towards the end of our conversation, Emma. So I wanted to invite you to dream a little. How could feminist economics change Europe?
What would Europe look like if we did have feminist economic policies?
EMMA HOLTEN
I think the first big thing would be shorter working time for everybody. For a long time, we've had this idea that we could get women to work exactly the same amount of hours as men. And that's been a big push.
We're seeing it also in Germany now, and Matt's being out and saying we have all these lazy women not working. He doesn't want to build daycare centres to support this work, but that's another issue.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
And they also want women to keep reproducing as well.
EMMA HOLTEN
Yeah, same, if not more children and more work. I think it's difficult for me to understand when economists are the most angry at women when they have children or when they don't. But no matter what, they're doing something wrong.
And I think lowering the working time and starting that project instantly, you know, first in obviously the services sectors and the white collar sectors and going from, if not, you know, eight hours a day to six hours a day is an extremely important thing for equality in the home, for well being in the home, for equality in the labour market, that would change so much. And I think also in local communities. So I think that would be the first thing that I would really hope.
And I think we are actually seeing big companies starting to do this now, because they, big surprise, are seeing more well being more retention, and even some places increase productivity from this. So I think that would be the first thing. I think I actually, I get a lot of hope from people like Zohran Mamdani, Zak Polanski, who are really rallying people on politics that are about regular people's regular lives.
And I think that's where the fascists in Europe have been much, much more skilled than the centre parties and the left-wing parties: at talking about everyday lives. What does your city look like? What does your children's school look like? What does your working life look like? And the centre parties often have these big abstract ideas of a good economy and growth and productivity. That doesn't mean nothing to anybody.
Nobody understands what that means. Talk about is the school good? Yes or no?
Are there trash on the streets? Yes or no? Is your mother's care home good or bad?
Like those are the kinds of questions and the nitty gritty questions we need to get into. And I think as soon as we start doing that, we will see a reignited interest in politics. And I think Zohran Mamdani is a perfect example of that.
And he got a lot of votes from people who both identified as left wing and right wing. A reignited interest in Europe, in the everyday lives of people would make a big difference. And I think the distance between politicians and what we could call regular people has simply become too great.
I have been so fortunate now the book is out in a lot of European countries and I get to travel and speak to people. And I think what's so amazing about talking about care work is that it is an issue that really unites across the political spectrum. Everyone cares about their children, their elderly parents, their brother who has a disability.
It is something where we can really meet and speak about the conditions of everyday life. And I think it's a huge gift to be able to have that conversation. The first politician in Europe who really understands how much care work matters to people is going to be very successful.
[MUSIC]
KATY LEE
After the conversation you just heard, we asked Emma if there was anyone in Europe coming up with policies that are treating care work in a more imaginative way, treating it as the vital societal work that it actually is. And she did mention that there are some politicians in Finland and in Iceland who she sees as making really positive moves on this.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Yeah, and actually that last bit of the conversation about Zohran Mamdani, New York's new mayor, it really got me thinking, like, where are the Zohran Mamdanis of Europe? These like insurgent politicians? Where are the politicians who manage to talk about policy in a way that speaks to normal people's existence?
And actually I want to throw this question out to our listeners. Who are the most exciting and talented politicians where you are in Europe? Emma already mentioned Zack Polansky, the new leader of the UK Green Party.
He's probably the closest to Mamdani in style of the European politicians I'm aware of, but I'm sure we're missing so many. So yeah, please do get in touch.
KATY LEE
And just to clarify, I guess you're primarily interested in left-wing politicians, seeing as we already know quite a lot about right-wing charismatic populist politicians who claim to be speaking for the people and understanding their real experiences.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Yes, I think you're right. So yeah, if you do have politicians who you think fit this mould, please send in your tips to hello at europeanspodcast.com or via our Instagram, Mastodon or BlueSky accounts.
KATY LEE
And they don't necessarily have to be young politicians, right?
DOMINIC KRAEMER
No, absolutely not. All ages. We'll go through your suggestions and then try to create something like a carousel for our Instagram.
Maybe we'll talk about it on the show as well.
KATY LEE
I thought you were going to like launch a manifesto for saving Europe. An Instagram carousel. You know what? Start small. Why not start with Instagram carousel? And actually, can I just say our Instagram is kind of flourishing at the moment. If you haven't checked it out for a while, we've had a bit of an Instagram makeover. Come take a look. We're there at @europeanspodcast.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
One of the other things that really struck me whilst listening to Emma talk was the fact that she is arguing for the celebration and respect for family life. And I found myself thinking, oh, that's not like that far away from sounding like a Christian conservative argument for preserving family values. But I really like that she's trying to find a way to appeal across the political spectrum and arguing that we should take family life seriously, even if it has recently been more of a right wing trope.
KATY LEE
Yeah, I like that too. Although I would push back against the idea that promoting family life has to be seen as a typically right wing thing to value. Like if we are going to be caricatured about politics, left wing people love policies that promote working less, don't they?
I don't know, maybe this is just one of those moments where you realise left wing people, right wing people, the gulf between them isn't always as massive as we might think.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Oh, Katy, we're going to be cancelled by right wing people and left wing people this week.
KATY LEE
Bring it on.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
I guess the point I was trying to make is that conservative Christian politicians have recently made it seem like they own the family issue. Yeah, or at least they've tried to frame it that way. And I like that Emma is doing something to reappropriate the issue of family life.
KATY LEE
There you go. We just fixed polarisation. Thank you, Emma.
Emma's book Deficit is available in English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian and Swedish. It'll be out in Spanish in June and soon after that in Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian and Japanese. Wow.
Go read it and let us know what you think.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Thank you to Wojciech Oleksiak and Morgan Childs for producing this week's podcast. I'm away next week but Katy will be back with another episode on Thursday.
KATY LEE
I will indeed. I'll see you then.
DOMINIC KRAEMER
Hej då.
KATY LEE
Bye.
Producer
Morgan Childs and Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering
Wojciech Oleksiak
Music
Jim Barne
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Photo of Emma (c) Claudia Vega