rough outline for today's session

1. Feminist Economics Workshop
27 February 2013
Over the past thirty years, despite
their being essential to human life,
neoliberal restructuring across the
world has privatised, eroded and
demolished our shared resources,
and ushered in a ‘crisis of social
reproduction.’
‘Cuts are a Feminist Issue’, Soundings
(Dec 2011), p.73.

2. The term social reproduction encompasses
Labour in this sphere is often devalued
all the means by which society reproduces
and privatised, and is typically
its families, citizens and workers. It includes
performed by women in their ‘double
all the labour that is necessary for a society
day’ or ‘second shift’, alongside paid
to reproduce itself: the biological
wage labour. But reproductive labour
production of people and workers, and all
of this kind is just as central to
the social practices that sustain the
capitalist accumulation as are other
population – bearing children, raising
forms of labour, which means that
children, performing emotional work,
struggles over its structure and
providing clothing and food, and cooking
distribution are fundamental to any
and cleaning.
understanding of issues of power and
the relationships between labour and
As a concept social reproduction has been
capital, as well as the potential for
key to feminist social theory, because it
their transformation.
challenges the usual distinctions that are
made between productive and
reproductive labour, or between the labour
market and the home.