Gendering Struggles Against Informal and Precarious Work

Rina Agarwala, Jennifer Jihye Chun, Rina Agarwala, Jennifer Jihye Chun

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787693692
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Économie du travail

Gender is a defining feature of informal/precarious work in the 21st century, yet studies rarely adopt a gendered lens when examining collective efforts to challenge informality and precarity. This volume foregrounds the gendered dimensions of informal/precarious workers' struggles as a crucial starting point for re-theorizing the future of global labor movements.
This volume includes six empirical chapters spanning five countries - the United States, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, and India - to explore exactly how gender is intertwined into informal/precarious workers organizing efforts, why gender is addressed, and to what end. The chapters focus on two gender-typed sectors - domestic work and construction - to identify the varying experiences of and struggles against gender and informality/precarity, as well as the conditions of movement success and failure. Across countries and sectors, the volume shows how informal/precarious worker organizations are on the front lines of challenging the multiple forms of gendered inequalities that shape contemporary practices of accumulation and labor regulation.
Their struggles are making major transformations in terms of increasing women's leadership and membership in labor movements and exposing how gender interacts with other ascriptive identities to shape work. They are also re-shaping hegemonic scripts of capitalist accumulation, development, and gender to attain recognition for female-dominated occupations and reproductive needs for the first time ever. These outcomes are crucial as sources of emancipatory transformations at a time when state and public support for labor and social protection is facing the deep assault of transnational production and globalizing markets.

FROM THEORY TO PRAXIS AND BACK TO THEORY: INFORMAL WORKERS’ STRUGGLES AGAINST CAPITALISM AND PATRIARCHY IN INDIA

Rina Agarwala

ABSTRACT

This chapter examines how gender interacts with informal workers’ collective action strategies in the context of contemporary development scripts around economic growth. Specifically, it engages the theoretical debates on the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism as the systems of domination that organize gender and class. Drawing from a comparative analysis of informal workers’ movements in India’s domestic work and construction sectors, I find the relationship between gender and class and between patriarchy and capitalism is being reconceptualized from below and differs by occupational structures and organization histories. For domestic workers, movements assert what I call a “unitary” model of exploitation. Because domestic workers’ organizations entered the productive sphere through a focus on social reproduction, their struggles conflate gender and class to reverse the shame attached to domestic work and increase the recognized worth of women’s labor. Because construction workers’ organizations mobilize male and female workers and began as class-based organizations focusing on productive work, they articulate what I term “a dual systems” approach to patriarchy and capitalism that exposes inequalities between men and women within the sector, such as unequal pay, glass ceilings, and issues of embodiment. In both cases, global development scripts have not only shaped movement approaches, but also enabled movements to articulate gendered labor subjects in innovative ways. While domestic workers’ unitary model has had more success in increasing women workers’ dignity and leadership, construction workers’ dualist model has attained more successes in attaining material benefits in the reproductive sphere. These findings suggest that debates on unitary versus dual-systems models of exploitation present a false dichotomy and veil the reality that both are necessary for feminist theory, development models, and women workers’ struggles on the ground.

Keywords: Informal labor; feminist theory; social movements; patriarchy; capitalism; domestic work; construction; social reproduction

Since the 1990s, scholars have argued that not only does transnational production have gendered consequences, but gendered practices and subjects also constitute global markets (Salzinger, 2004). Drawing from this framework, I turn our gaze from structure to politics to examine how gender interacts with informal workers’ collective action strategies in the context of contemporary development scripts of accumulation. What are the gendered consequences of informal workers’ movements and how have gendered practices and subjects constituted informal workers’ movements?

To frame this analysis, I engage in theoretical debates on the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism as the systems of domination that organize gender and class. I argue this relationship is being reconceptualized from below. Empirically, I anchor the analysis in a comparative study of informal workers’ movements in India’s domestic work and construction sectors to ask how these workers differentially conceptualize and address this relationship. Do organized informal workers address patriarchy and capitalism as a unitary system or as distinct but interrelated systems of oppression and why? How do these conceptualizations at a local level shape informal workers’ movements and capitalist accumulation at a global level? How can these grounded findings (re)inform our theories on the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism (and between gender and class) today?

Informal workers provide a useful starting point for this inquiry. First, informal labor offers an important lens into the changing contours of the social contract framing contemporary accumulation. Drawing from the Regulation School, I define informal labor as that which produces legal goods and services, but operates outside all health, safety, financial, and labor regulations governing the standard employment relationship (SER) (Breman & Linden, 2014; Portes, Castells, & Benton, 1989). State regulation (and the degree to which it is implemented) draws boundaries that distinguish subsets of workers depending on the level of protection they are entitled to. As I have argued elsewhere, this definition does not imply that informal workers (or those omitted from these regulations) are untouched by state regulation. Clearly, states govern informal labor as a relationship to formal labor, the state, and capital. As well, informal workers are subject to a host of regulations and even protections from the state that are not marked by the SER and are often not classified as “labor” rights (Agarwala, 2013).

What is important for our purposes is that, in many countries, these regulations that target the SER (which protect a narrow subset of workers and create a large mass of unprotected, excluded workers) mark a twentieth-century social accumulation model that is currently being questioned and unraveled. As a result, this definition of informal labor is also in flux. If present-day labor regulations are undone and even the narrow subset of workers lose protections, the distinction between “formal” and “informal” workers would lose meaning since all workers would be unprotected or “informal.” This scenario raises important questions as to how informal (and formal workers) are addressing the current onslaught on (imperfect) twentieth-century regulations. Will workers try to expand existing regulations to include more workers or overturn the model to ensure protections along non-employment related lines, such as “citizenship” or other identities?

Second, informal workers as a class in itself provides ready insights into the mutual dynamics of patriarchy and capitalism over time. Unprotected, low wage, precarious work has always existed, especially in the Global South, and has long absorbed female labor. Informal labor enables workers to simultaneously fulfill productive and reproductive work (at the expense of self-exploitation) in spaces that lie between the public and private spheres.

Third, informal workers as a class for itself provide important insights into how patriarchy and capitalism are conceived and fought on the ground. Many scholars have noted an increased feminization of informal labor (Ahn; Chant & Pedwell, 2008; Chen; Kabeer, 2010). Given that informal work is growing across economies, however, these claims are often unsupported by data. In India, although the share of female workers in informal work is higher than the share of male workers, informal work itself is still predominantly male. Whether the structure of informal work is or is not female dominated, we know that informal workers’ organizations incorporate more female members and leaders and address women’s concerns of reproductive costs more than formal workers’ movements.

Finally, informal workers’ movements provide an important contrast to earlier formal labor movements (especially in the US and Europe) that cemented gender hierarchies by excluding women workers – most famously, through living wages. Informal labor movements, however, have targeted women workers, sometimes excluding male workers. At first glance, this trend fits contemporary development scripts, which scholars argue privilege identity-based struggles against patriarchy over collective struggles against capitalism (Fraser, 2009; Roberts & Soedeberg, 2012). Indeed, at the start of this research, I assumed (wrongly) that informal workers’ movements that privilege gender identities would foment individualistic, “woman-as-victim” approaches to addressing poverty.

But my findings, which draw from interviews with members and leaders of domestic and construction workers’ movements, yield more complex results that differ by sector. I find domestic workers’ struggles assert what I call a “unitary” model of exploitation. Because domestic workers’ organizations entered the productive sphere through a focus on the reproductive sphere, they articulate an identity that conflates gender and class to reverse the shame attached to domestic work and increase the recognized worth of women’s labor. Because construction workers’ organizations mobilize male and female workers and began as class-based organizations focusing on productive work, they articulate what I term “a dual systems” approach to patriarchy and capitalism that exposes inequalities between men and women within the sector, such as unequal pay, glass ceilings, and issues of embodiment.

In both cases, recent development scripts have not only shaped movements’ approaches, but also enabled them to articulate gendered labor subjects in innovative ways. While domestic workers’ unitary model has had more success in increasing women workers’ dignity and leadership, construction workers’ dualist model has attained more successes in attaining material benefits in the reproductive sphere. Both approaches have the potential to nuance labor movements and capitalist accumulation models in the contemporary era, but they are also each limited in ways I explore in this chapter. These findings suggest that debates on unitary versus dual-systems models of exploitation present a false dichotomy and veil the reality that both are necessary for women workers’ struggles on the ground.

CONNECTING THEORY TO PRAXIS: A DUALIST VS UNITARY SYSTEM OF PATRIARCHY AND CAPITALISM

Since the 1970s, feminist scholars have debated the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism. Most concur these systems of power are intertwined in a complex relationship – at times fortifying one another, at other times conflicting. Scholars diverge, however, on the shades of distinction between the two systems. Should we draw a clear line between patriarchy and capitalism? Or are they too interrelated in practice to make such false distinctions, even in theory? These questions are significant for political struggles against domination.

Heidi Hartmann (1979) famously launched what became known as “dual systems theory,” conceptualizing patriarchy and capitalism as distinct systems of domination that interact with one another. Capitalism divides populations into classes based on their relationship to the means of production. The primary mechanism of exploitation is profiting off labor value. The social relationship pinning the system together is the necessary interdependence between classes. Political counter-movements valorize labor and collective action. Patriarchy, in turn, divides populations into sexual subjects based on gendered constructs. The primary mechanism of exploitation is control over sexuality and social constructions of gender. The social relationship reproducing patriarchy is intimate interdependence (within household and family). Political counter-movements fight for individual rights and emancipation.

This conceptualization of two distinct systems fits well with the influential framework of “intersectionality.” At the individual level, scholars highlighted how people experience the reciprocal interconnections between distinct social relations of domination (i.e., patriarchy and capitalism) and identity (i.e., gender and class) (Crenshaw, 1989). At the meta-level, scholars detailed the formation of each system of domination autonomously, while also exposing their interrelations. As Barbara Risman (2004, p. 443) wrote, “While various axes of domination are always intersecting, the systems of inequality are not necessarily produced or re-created with identical social processes.” At the historical level, French material feminists illustrated how the interrelationships between gender and class (and race), as well as their corresponding systems of domination, continuously reshape and “co-form” one another over time (Arruzza, 2016).

By the 1990s, dual-systems approaches had raised critical questions as to why interactions between systems of oppression take place to begin with. Scholars also critiqued dual-systems approaches for absolving classical theories of capitalism (of both the Marxist and neoclassical varieties); theories of gender relations simply needed to be added on to unchallenged, sex-blind theories of capitalism (Young, 1997). Finally, critics blamed dual-systems approaches for paving the way for postmodern approaches that foregrounded discursive, cultural, and ideological elements of gender oppression, while ignoring material aspects.

As an alternative to dual-systems theory, Marxist and socialist feminists recently articulated a unitary theory by reviving the concept of “social reproduction” as a key explanation for gender oppression and its relationship to capitalism (Arruzza, 2016; Bezanson & Luxton, 2006; Ferguson, 1999; Fraser, 2016). Social reproduction refers to the centrality of the work of maintaining and reproducing human life, which in turn reproduces the entire system of economic and social relations. This work is performed within the family, by the state, and in the market; it can take place with and without pay. In all cases, it implicates male and female labor in different ways and has reproduced women’s oppression across time and space. On one hand, “social reproduction,” highlights that households operate through a “distinct set of dynamics [from the market]” motivated by the “impulse to meet human needs” through contradictory relations of domination and intimacy. On the other hand, “social reproduction” emphasizes that households (and the labor within) form the material basis of life and are thus “as much a part of the ways people co-operate to meet their daily and future needs as is the market” (Ferguson, 1999, p. 6). “Social reproduction” thus forces us to rethink classical conceptualizations of capitalism.

Despite the theoretical heft of unitary theories, empirical studies on gender and labor under contemporary capitalism continue to illustrate patriarchy and capitalism as distinct, interrelated power systems (even when they deny dual systems at a theoretical level). For example, scholars explaining state-led industrialization in the Global South highlight capitalism’s appropriation of patriarchy to attain not only women’s unpaid reproductive labor (i.e., social reproduction), but also women’s low-...