South Asian Women Homeworkers in East London

Abstract

This chapter examines the interaction of gender and ethnicity in the experiences of South Asian homeworkers in east London.¹ It draws on the author’s small-scale qualitative study to address questions such as why women become homeworkers, the conditions under which they work and women’s feelings about the choices available to them. Since the mid-1970s the phenomenon of homeworking has received considerable attention as a result of concerns to improve the pay and working conditions of women workers (Allen and Wolkowitz, 1987). Early research on homework attempted to document the persistence of a large, low-paid labour force (Bolton, 1975; Jordan, 1978). These studies challenged the prevailing image of homeworkers as women supported by their husbands who did homeworking in their spare time. They showed that women were forced by economic necessity to undertake long hours of work for low wages (Allen and Wolkowitz, 1987). Mendels (1972) examined the historical contribution of this form of work to capital accumulation and industrial expansion in Western Europe and its relevance to economic development in the third world. Homework has come increasingly to be recognized as a vital element in the capitalist labour process rather than a marginal activity (Rose, 1983).