Chloe Hite

ANTH 442

Keyword Revision

The term “women’s work” has different meanings across cultures and has undergone many changes throughout history. To some, “women’s work” means work that women should be allowed to do, and to others it could mean work that woman are expected to do. The only aspect of “women’s work” that seems to be shared across the board is reproductive labor. Anything else encapsulated in “women’s work” varies between cultures, religions, social classes, and economic structures. These ideals also tend to change in order to suit the patriarchy and economic structure of a society.

Within many societies throughout history, women have been the backbone of the reproductive labor in societies. This reproductive labor is extremely important, and extremely undervalued. Every economic structure, be it capitalism, socialism, or communism, relies on having enough workers and consumers to sustain an economy. However, reproductive labor does not just include the creation and raising of children to be future workers, but also the managing and caring of the domestic sphere that gives workers the ability to go out and work. The idea of “labor” particularly in a capitalist context, typically refers to work that results in the creation of a commodity that can be bought and sold; it is something that’s value can often be quantified. Because reproductive labor often occurs outside of the public eye, and does not produce quantifiable commodities, it is consistently undervalued. It is also undervalued because quite simply, the patriarchy values men more than women, and forces women into positions in which they are reliant on men. In these societies where women were restricted from types of labor that could increase their own value and ability to take care of themselves, their only hope was providing free reproductive labor to men, making themselves valuable enough to a man to ensure her own survival. “Service, care, and attention work are considered unskilled because they originated in a gendered division of labor that did not require the identification of skills to secure a contract, as this was covered in contracts of marriage and servitude” (Vora, 2015). “Women’s work” in terms of reproductive labor remains undervalued because the free or cheap labor it provides is productive not only to reinforcing hierarchies that keep men in power, but to capitalism.

The idea that women’s first responsibility is to be a housewife and mother is a popular one. “But the definition of women as housewives also suggests the heterosexualization of women’s work, women are always defined in relation to men and conjugal marriage” (Mohanty, 2003). In fact, having a wife or daughters who do not work outside the home was often used as a status symbol for men to display their wealth. Women of the middle and lower classes did not often have the luxury of focusing on only reproductive labor, they may be considered housewives and bear all the responsibilities that come with that, but also need to engage in productive labor. Among the Narsapur in India, the expansion of the lace industry in the 70’s brought about a complete masculinization of trade jobs, and feminization of production jobs, men considered themselves businessmen for selling the lace that women produced.

Pictured above, is a group of Nasapur women making silk, this is not done in a factory, as many people may picture, but inside a home. Because the silk making labor occurs inside the house, their labor was considered “leisure”, and they were still defined as housewives, based on their relationship to men (Mohanty, 2003).

It’s been established that the idea of “women’s work” varies amongst social classes, and that things classified as such remains undervalued in capitalist societies simply because it better serves capitalism to do so, however there are still so many other ways that “women’s work” plays into systems in global Asia. In China, urban and rural people were treated as separate classes, and people were restricted to whichever category they were born into. However, in an economic reform that opened the country to foreign capital, rural people were allowed to come and seek factory jobs in urban areas. Although rural Chinese families maintained a patriarchal structure, it was mostly women who traveled to the urban areas to become factory workers. They were often expected to send money back to their families, but they had the power to choose how much they sent, and what they kept for themselves. This increase of rural women in the work force changed the idea of what “women’s work” encapsulated. “Rural labor flows over the past fifteen years have launched a silent ‘social revolution’ in Chinese society that is challenging the existing rural-urban divide, reconfiguring the state-society relationships, restructuring the patriarchal family, and remaking class and gender relations in particular” (Ngai, 2005). While it is true that this change has given women a bit more power over their own lives, it did significantly less than it was supposed to. One of the main goals in the Chinese socialism revolution was women’s liberation, and that fact likely contributed to the support of socialism by many women. However, economic, and political goals were prioritized, and once it became clear that socialism and patriarchy could exist together, the promise of women’s liberation went largely ignored. In addition to this, the one-child policy further limited the reproductive rights of women taking from them even more control. This one-child policy allowed the patriarchy cause problems for the Chinese government. Since boys were favored, girls were often aborted, put up for adoption, or worse, and now there are not enough women to marry the men in China. This was a contributing factor to the one-child policy being lifted.

Work done by women has always played a role in social, economic, and political interactions in Asia, but there is so much more that needs to be investigated to really understand just how true this is. What qualifies as women’s work in various places across Asia? What drives corporations to employ women, and how does this system give or take from women’s personal autonomy? When is women’s work defined as labor in a society? When does a woman engaging in productive labor conform to gender roles, and when does it defy them? How does women’s labor correspond with various social movements? These are questions just some of the questions that need to be addressed to better understand the global effects of working women.

Works Cited:

Chandra Talpade Mohanty. 2003. Feminism without Borders : Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Nasapur Handicrafts. 2019. Photograph. Vovizag, April 6, 2019.

Ngai, Pun. 2005. Made in China. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822386759.

Vora, Kalindi. 2015. Review of Limits of Labor: Affect and the Biological in Transnational Surrogacy and Service Work. In Life Support: Biocapital and the New History of Outsourced Labor.