Wages for Housework
India's Experiment with Unconditional Cash Transfers to Women
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:7th Aug '26
£125.00
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A silent revolution is underway in India today. Starting in 2020, twelve states have rolled out unconditional cash transfers to nearly 118 million women. While the media disparages these transfers as 'freebies', Wages for Housework: India's Experiment with Unconditional Cash Transfers to Women offers the first book-length study of these transfers, using social reproduction feminism, particularly the wages for housework campaign, to theorize unconditional cash transfers as providing economic recognition of women's unpaid domestic and care work. Against the backdrop of a low female labour force participation rate, a residual welfare regime, and an entrenched culture of gendered familialism wherein women are presumed responsible for care, the book addresses arguments for and against unconditional cash transfers in feminist economics and welfare theory. In doing so, it recollects the vision of the founding mothers of the Indian Constitution who advocated for the recognition of women's unpaid work. It traces how Indian courts have, since Independence, treated women's unpaid domestic and care work as being on par with an occupation to hold that the economic recognition of unpaid work is a step towards the constitutional vision of equality and dignity. Through an in-depth study of unconditional cash transfers in three states, namely, Goa, Assam, and West Bengal (implemented in 2013, 2020, and 2021, respectively), Kotiswaran elaborates on state-specific welfare regimes and analyses the implementation of cash transfers through interviews with bureaucrats, academics, feminist activists, and women beneficiaries to understand if and how they have resulted in women's empowerment, whether in terms of education, paid employment, or the gendered division of labour. In conclusion, the work posits that unconditional cash transfers represent an unprecedented and welcome expansion of the Indian welfare regime and to be truly gender transformative, they need to be embedded in a broader feminist agenda for care. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read on Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
What makes Wages for Housework truly exceptional is that it takes women's lived experiences seriously, listening closely to how women themselves understand cash transfers, autonomy, dignity, labour, and citizenship. At a moment when feminist politics globally is struggling to articulate alternatives to right-wing governance, this book offers a bold, empirically grounded, and theoretically rigorous vision of what a feminist care manifesto might look like. It is an indispensable resource for scholars of feminism, development, law, political science, and economics and vital for anyone seeking to imagine a more just social contract centred on care, dignity, and life-making labour. * Prof. Leopoldina Fortunati, Senior Professor of Sociology of Culture and Communication, University of Udine *
In recent years, unconditional cash transfer schemes for women have been rolled out across much of India, reversing an earlier reluctance to join the first wave of cash transfer programmes across the Global South. The political popularity of such schemes has led many commentators to focus on their instrumental usage to mobilize women as voters in India. Kotiswaran's much needed intervention pushes us to ask what it would take to instead visualize these schemes as the foundation of a feminist welfare state. The book offers a compelling feminist perspective on a rapidly feminizing welfare regime. * Dr. Louise Tillin, Professor of Politics, King's College London *
Does the proliferation of unconditional cash transfers to women in low-, middle- and high-income countries mean that social contracts are being remade at last to recognize the centrality to human well-being of unpaid domestic and care work? Are feminist values and women's realities leading to a new theory of welfare states? Drawing on in-depth investigations into the explosion of such transfers in recent years in India, this brilliant book answers these questions using the theory of social reproduction. It nuances debates about care work and the consequences of its socialization, cutting across political party lines and ideologies. Lucidly and provocatively written and an absolute must-read for all political economists concerned to find new pathways out of current theoretical impasses and policy and action conundrums. * Prof. Gita Sen, DAWN *
ISBN: 9780198934493
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 570g
378 pages