How do the international rules of 'work' and 'economic activity' treat 'occupation'? What 'work' is constantly absent from the database for determining public resource allocations and investments? What occupies those whose work is unpaid? Is this work visible in Occupational Science research? What are the implications for 'overoccupation' in a human rights context? Are there opportunities for political economists and occupational scientists to work together on these issues? KEYWORDS occupation and human rights; over-occupation; family carers Introducing political economy and occupation Thank you for the honour of the invitation to address you today. My discipline background is in political economy and public policy, my research is feminist, and for the last forty years, it has had a human rights focus. For occupational therapists, this address begins with a segue, a short introduction to a major feature of economics: its treatment of 'occupation'. I move to a discussion of synergies between my work and yours, in the environment of human rights, with a case study on the caregivers of those with HIV and AIDS using a capability framework. I describe my own experience of managing the care of a terminally ill family member, and what I learned from this. I conclude with the exploitation of women's unpaid care work. My work in economics (Waring, 1988, 1999) has focused on the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA). You will be familiar with the term GDP, and these growth
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