Homeworking Women: A Gender Justice Perspective

Homework; work that is categorised as informal employment, performed in the home, mainly for subcontractors and mostly undertaken by women. The inequities and injustices inherent in homework conditions maintain women’s weak bargaining position, preventing them from making any improvements to their lives via their work. The best way to tackle these issues is not to abolish, but to bring equality and justice to homework.

This book contributes a gender justice framework to analyse and confront the issues and problems of homework. The authors propose four justice dimensions – recognition, representation, rights and redistribution – to examine and analyse homework. This framework also takes into account the structures and processes of capitalism and the patriarchy, and the relations of domination that are widely held to be the major factors that determine homework injustice. The authors discuss strategies and approaches that have worked for homeworkers, highlighting why they worked and the features that were beneficial for them.

Homeworking Women will be of interest to individuals and organisations working with or for the collective benefit of homeworkers, academics and students interested in feminism, labour regulation, informal work, supply chains and social and political justice.

Annie Delaney is Senior Lecturer, School of Management, College of Business, RMIT University Melbourne, Australia.

Rosaria Burchielli is Associate Professor (Honorary), Department of Management, La Trobe University, Australia.

Shelley Marshall is Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, RMIT University, Australia.

Jane Tate worked as Coordinator of Homeworkers Worldwide, Leeds, UK, until September 2018.