Rejecting Separate Spheres

Explicitly or implicitly, feminist or not, much of the literature employing a political economy perspective has assumed the existence of two largely separate spheres: a public sphere located in the formal economy and dominated by men, and a private sphere confined to the household and managed by women. For non-feminist theorists, this assumption is evident in the focus on the formal economy to the virtual exclusion of the household. The separation of spheres means, it seems, that the household economy is essentially irrelevant to the functioning of capitalism and to an understanding of how the system works. Feminist theorists, however, have frequently looked to the household for an explanation of sex -