Feminist Political Economy

Question 1

three major components involved in social reproduction:

Answer 1

1. biological reproduction of the species
2. reproduction of the labour force which involves subsistence, education, and training (on a daily and generational basis)
3. the reproduction and provisioning of caring needs

Question 2

Social reproduction

Answer 2

includes biological reproduction as well as the mental, emotional, and physical activities involved in the “care, socialization and maintenance” of children, adult workers, persons with disabilities, the elderly and the ill

Question 3

Gendered Division of Production and Reproduction

Answer 3

• Production – coded masculine
• Reproduction – coded feminine
• “Women have been subordinate in both domains

Question 4

Stratified Reproduction

Answer 4

• Power relations that shape social reproduction
• “physical and social reproductive tasks are accomplished differently according to inequalities that are based on class, race, ethnicity, gender, place in the global economy, and migration status and that are structured by social, economic, and political forces. The reproductive labor – physical, mental, and emotional – of bearing, raising and socializing children and of creating and maintaining households and people (infancy to old age) is differently experienced, valued, and rewarded according to inequalities of access to material and social resources in particular historical and cultural contexts”

Question 5

Racial Division of Reproductive Labour

Answer 5

• racial-ethnic women were disproportionately represented as domestic servants, performing the laborious tasks of maintaining the home while their white employers served as housewives and hostesses
• racial-ethnic women are significantly overrepresented in both the private household and institutional incarnations of cooking and cleaning work.

Question 6

Care Work

Answer 6

• Attending to the physical and emotional needs of people
• Emotional work
• Relational
• Nurturing
• Obligation?
• Feminine?
• the work that makes all other work possible

Question 7

Femininity, Masculinity and Unpaid Care Work

Answer 7

• Gendered social norms construct care work as a function of women’s “natural” roles as mothers and wives
• “Clearly there is something about masculine identity that makes men deeply uncomfortable about taking on care work even within the privacy of their own homes”
• Restrictive gender norms limit human potential
“Almost universally, when compared to men, women have longer work days due to the combination of their paid and unpaid care work”

Question 8

Neoliberalism and Multiple Crises in Care

Answer 8

• Social reproduction is multiply sited and is being restructured globally
• Responsibility shifts between states, markets, individual families, and communities
• “the ongoing and serious changes in our social systems of caring that have been wrought by globalization”
• Declining or non-existent state support for reproductive needs of citizens as a result of neoliberal restructuring
• Growing number of women entering the labour force since the post-WWII period