Q .
Drawout the significance of Maria Mies’s work "lace makers of
Narsapur '' for historiography of labor in India, with special
emphasis on how women's work is invisible in the historical
process of ‘housewification’?
Indian labor historiography have shifted focus on key themes, like;
community, polity, gender and law; away from the logical frameworks
of laborers.
On issues of gender, writings on labor are, moving beyond earlier,
masculinist framework to production of gendered identities. Maria
Mies, “lace makers of Narsapur '', defines ‘housewification’ instead of
using the term ‘domestication’ of women's domestic labor as an
important paradigm.
Let us begin with the definitional, accept, then significance by
emphasizing on invisibilized woman's work in the process of
housewification.
She defines it as a process by which women or socially defined as
housewives, dependent for their sustenance on husband's income, it
respective of whether they are de facto, housewives or not.
Also, this social definition of women as housewives needs to be seen
as the counterpart of the social definition of men as breadwinners,
irrespective of their actual contribution to their families,
sustenance/subsistence.
She further argues that this erroneous assumption of
conceptualizing women as housewives and men as breadwinners
(shared by Marxist and non-Marxists of her time) was based on
‘capitalism’ will develop the productivity of labor to such an extent
that the reproduction costs of all workers will be covered by male
wage.
Mies further asserted, that income of majority of men in
underdeveloped countries doesn't cover the ‘reproduction costs’
above, and thus depends largely on hidden subsistence of their
women. The propagation of these conceptualisations in
underdeveloped countries, building legal and institutional framework
to support it creates the illusion among people of ‘development’ will
eventually give all men sufficient wage to keep an unlearning
housewife. It leads to defining bulk of women's subsistence work as
non-work hence open to unrestricted exploitation.
The book by Mies is a case study of how women's involvement in the
lace making industry lead to “impoverishment of the woman and a
polarization between men and women”. (Dharam Ghai, ILO)
The work traces the historical development of the lace industry in
India since the 17th century and then turns to a qualitative analysis of
the production and reproduction relations with industry and its
effects on women.
She further argues that ideological views of one coincided with
economic one, such as in Narsapur-status, symbol of belonging to a
high caste, if the women of the family stays in the house instead of
working outside in the fields. Hence, many women chose lace making
because it simultaneously bought capital as well as sense of higher
status because they were working in their house itself,
So capitalism does penetrate domestic households by modifying
itself to the contours of traditional beliefs, extracting profits from
spare time works of housewives.
So the book suggests, society is benefiting economically from
women's work, yet not ready to give her work, the status of work and
maintaining an ideological underpinnings of patriarchy as it is.
Also, she gives fresh perspectives that usual, viewed poverty
alienating policies., aiming at technological backwardness (Green
Revolution), but many a times it is very is societal conceptions,
especially the housewife works, what invisibilized" from where
poverty arises as well
The hegemonic arrangement of women's work itself ultimately
makes the definition of work rather obscured. But hegemony of
women's domestic work such as cooking food, household work, child
rearing, and so on, makes women's work, not regarded as a
meaningful work, but instead as a part of “embedded in nature”.
This neglects the labor power of women-which is often ignored in
capitalism.
Women's work was often seen as ‘shadow’ work, argues Mies. While
Fedrici argues that the issue of envisaged women in doing household
work as one of the causes, why it is not considered "real work".
The implication as stated by Dalla Costa, and James is that it may
even affect the public perception of the leadership capacity of
women compared to men. Moreover, the position of women who
work in production branches in capitalism, such as factory settings,
is still considered to be different from men in the same working
relationship.
Furthermore, the invisible working life of women, included in the
relations of production outside home, often becomes the initial
starting point of another form of operation in capitalism-this time in
a specific spatial setting. In this case, capitalism promotes its social
construction of women, home and domestic sphere as a strategy,
what is another form of capital accumulation
Fildzah (In Indonesian context) argues, by establishing domestic
work is fair as the main locus of work, the discourse of work-family
balance emerges to reinforce women's obligations to preserve
household integrity.
