Women’s work in the India in the early 21 century

It is impossible to understand women’s work in India – or indeed anywhere else in the world today – without situating it in the specific trajectory of capitalism in that location. Throughout its history, capitalism has proved adept at causing patterns of labour supply to change in accordance with demand, and this is particularly so in the case of female labour. Women have been part of the working class since the beginning of capitalism, even when they have not been widely acknowledged as workers in their own right. Even when they are not paid workers, their often unacknowledged and unpaid contribution to social reproduction as well as to many economic activities has always been absolutely essential for the functioning of the system, as noted so effectively for India by Jain (1982) several decades ago. All women are usually workers, whether or not they are defined or recognised as such. In all societies, and particularly in developing countries, there remain essential but usually unpaid activities (such as cooking, cleaning and other housework, provisioning of basic household needs, child care, care of the sick and the elderly, as well as community-based activities), which are largely seen as the responsibility of the women. This pattern of unpaid work tends to exist even when women are engaged in outside work for an income, whether as wage workers or self-employed workers. Women from poor families who are engaged in outside work as well usually cannot afford to hire others to perform these tasks, so most often these are passed on to young girls and elderly women within the household, or become a “double burden” of work for such women. These processes are also integral to capitalism: the production of both use values and exchange values by women is essential for the accumulation process, and if anything this reliance has become even more marked in recent years.