Deveshi Chand Week 7

 The easiest way to keep someone from challenging your authority or superior status is to constantly remind them of how inferior or insignificant they are intrinsically. This is a technique employed when speaking of the contribution of women to the labor force and the income share of the household. Maria Mies in her piece Dynamics of Sexual Division of Labour and Capital Accumulation  has shed light upon this practice of paying lesser wages to women by belittling the work they do and maintaining the typical 'housewife' image of a woman, that also leads them to believe that the work they do is of less significance as compared to a man.

Mies also sheds light upon how most of the production that rural women do is of products that shall never be consumed by them, such as lace and handicrafts that are made for exporting or consumption by the upper classes. Although, the Marxist idea of alienation from their product isn't the only capitalist evil that these women face, for Mies also explains how these women play the role of the underpaid and unrecognised worker who is overworked by the bourgeoise, that despite doing none of the work reaps a majority of the benefits. The division of the sexes into 'housewife' and 'breadwinner' further help in this exploitation of working women, for their work can be easily labelled as unimportant and worthy only of a lower wage.