An Epistemic Iteration of the Problem of Domestic Work at the International Labour Organization

This paper demonstrates how “domestic work” came to be understood as a problem that demanded responses in the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a boundary organization. Boundary organizations are spaces in which science and nonscience interact. This paper characterises this process as one of epistemic iteration, in which knowledge claims are built upon, improved or corrected in the practical, problem-solving context of setting a labour standard for one of the largest labour sectors that employ women. In his study of the development of the concept of temperature, Hasok Chang characterises scientific progress as non-foundationalist and non-inductivist, where problems, tools, epistemic activities, and solutions are revised and evolve through practical engagement. This paper shows this progression in thinking about the problem of domestic work in four stages. Through the iterative actions of various actors, which eventually included domestic workers themselves, the phenomenon of domestic work increased in comprehensibility and tractability, from a problem “to do with women” to a problem of the global economy.