Sriyanshi Bhatt, Week 7

laced alienation- maria miles

The breakdown of feudal society and the division of work outside and inside the home as the product of the industrial revolution plays a crucial role in disregarding women’s work as that of no serious economic return. Or that which cannot be attributed to the global economics of a state. This disregard, as the author mentions, becomes necessary for the exploitation of their labour. 

What becomes interesting to note is the usage of the term exploitation with the Marxian perspective in the article. While, it is understood that because of the social positioning of women within the class and caste structure, it is easy to leverage more labour out of them while maintaining conditions of absolute adversity, the Marxian theory of claim of possession of the final product that the author makes is the one I would like to focus on. 

Exploitation of labour under capitalism, according to Marx, occurs because of the alienation of the worker from the work. Production of luxury goods that the impoverished Harijan Christian women produced, hence, had no role in their life, and could be alienated from them by the exploiters of their labour. Lace-making rather than being seen as a skill taught to them that helped reposition them in sexual and economic relations, was then seen as just a “leisure activity of housewives." The tactical utilisation of the theory of alienation provided the perfect opportunity for a class of middle men to intervene and exploit the women’s production for their advantage. This alienation of their labour activity and the constant definition of their work as that of a housewife is, hence, essential for their exploitation to persist.