The Crossroads of Class and Gender: Industrial Homework, Subcontracting, and Household Dynamics in Mexico City

In this innovative exploration of the interaction between economic processes and social relations, Lourdes Benería and Martha Roldán examine the effect of homework on gender and family dynamics. Their fieldwork in Mexico City during 1981-82 has enabled them to provide important new empirical data on industrial piecework performed by women as well as intimate glimpses of these women's lives which place that piecework in context. Tracing the stages of production from home to jobber, workshop, and manufacturer (often a multinational corporation), the authors demonstrate the way in which the work and lives of these women are connected through subcontracting to the national and often international system of production.

Lourdes Benería is professor of city and regional planning and women’s studies at Cornell University. Martha Roldán is a researcher of Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas and a professor in the department of the Social Sciences of Work at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Programa Buenos Aires.