This Women’s Studies Senior Seminar class has provided the opportunity to read about many cross-cultural issues pertaining to women. In the article, “Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity” by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, issues of “poor women worker in the global capitalist arena” (3) are addressed. Mohanty focuses on the plight of exploited, poor Third-World women. She illuminates specific issues that relate to the transformation of developing countries to capitalism. Mohanty’s article is split up into sections, the section that I want to focus on in order to compare key issues between Narsapur and America is called “Housewives and Homework: The Lacemakers of Narsapur."In this specific article Mohanty illuminates the effects that capitalism has on areas that are being developed, she portrays its effects on women as well as men. In Narsapur the lace making industry skyrocketed between the years 1970 and 1978. As a result of the increased demand, the process of making lace and the final product, which is lace, has been feminized while the trade or exportation of the lace is viewed as business, as a masculinize activity. Women working outside the home in this culture are defined as housewives, hence the job of being a lacemaker is defined as housework. Mohanty argues that the “definition of women as housewives also suggests the heterosexualization of women’s work - women are always defined in relation to men and conjugal marriage” (12). As a result of the heterosexualization of women’s work plus the feminization of the process and product and the masculinization of the trade “men sell women’s products and live on profits from women’s labor” (12).
I think there are similarities between the hegemony in Narsapur and in the United States. Our society’s practices and treatment towards women’s work and the treatment of women’s work in Naraspur can be compared. One comparison in the U.S. is the treatment of women’s work outside of the job force. By sheer lack of acknowledgement, women’s work inside the home is overlooked and hence not considered to be work at all. Work that receives no recognition is invisible and invisibility of work carries with it no economic power. American women are still perceived as primarily being housewives first, then they are doctors or lawyers or you can fill in the blank. There have been many studies that prove that women who work in paid positions, as many hours a week as their husbands still complete about 90% of the work that is related to the home. This includes work related to children if the couple has any. Not only is women’s work in the home overlooked but work in the home is expected. Because this economy is not designed to enable single income living, men and women usually have to work and if there is a family involved, she will do, on average, about 90% of housework. Yes, women can juggle work and home but we shouldn’t be made to do it, by our culture, societal expectations, capitalism or anyone. Women are trained from a very young age to enjoy participating in domestic work with toys such as vacuums, play kitchens with easy bake ovens, baby dolls and the list goes on. As a result of this pressure that starts at an early age, and continues after childhood, women are forced to be super human by believing that they must juggle all of these things appointed to them by societal expectations.
It has become so common to see women working outside the home that society doesn’t notice the dual responsibility that it has forced on women. Our society and economic stability depend on women working outside the home. Housework is overlooked because it does not contribute to capital. If it does not contribute to capital it is worthless. The irony is that this domestic labor often makes it possible for men to join the labor force and produce capital which is then valued.
Going back to lacemakers, capitalism is what is enabling the continued oppression and devaluing of lacemaker’s work in Narsapur. As poor societies are being “integrated into an international division of labor under the dictates of capital accumulation,” (12) job structures do not exist in the form that they did before capitalism happened.
It is important to point out that these women not only have to suffer gender discrimination, they also suffer from class discrimination. Capitalism is designed to uphold this discrimination by not allowing for upward mobility by creating financial situations that cannot be transcended. Mohanty says, “global assembly lines are as much about the production of people as they are about ‘providing jobs’ or making profit” (5). I think she is right: global assembly lines created by capitalism to benefit capitalism in the form of profits makes poor societies dependent on jobs that they weren’t dependent on before.
In Narsapur the effectiveness of this cycle can be proven by the way women view their own work as leisure or house work when it is neither. Their work is capital. While there are some similarities between the U.S. and Narsapur, I can say that at least our paid labor is not viewed as leisure, and although women’s work inside and outside the home is devalued compared to men’s work I am certainly glad that women’s paid labor is not reduced to housework. If that happened then women in America wouldn’t have any outlet for recognition.