Political Economy of Women and Work
This book review article is based on two books, Unheard Voices: Women, Work and Political Economy of Global Production (2020), by Farah Naz and Dieter Bögenhold; and Political Economy of Caste, Class and Gender: A Study of Rural Dalit Labourers in India (2022) by Ishita Mehrotra. The author draws interesting parallels between the lived realities of Dalit women agricultural workers in eastern Uttar Pradesh discussed in the latter, and that of home-based women workers in Pakistan contributing towards the global football industry, who form the subject of Naz and Bögenhold’s case study. Inequalities in labour markets are analysed within the larger political economy frameworks of agriculture and industrial production under neoliberal capitalism. The review explores how the books engage with various intersecting identity questions on the lines of gender, caste and class in contemporary labour markets.
