Conceptualising Paid Domestic Work

Abstract

This chapter lays the foundations of the book by first defining the work that the book intends to interrogate and unpacking the angst around it in some quarters of Western society, focusing on the feminist literature where such concerns are evident. Next, the chapter highlights theoretical contradictions and tensions in the literature and the assumptions underlying them, for instance, the work is a problem primarily between women. By drawing attention to some gaps and silences in the invaluable contribution made byprior research tounderstandings of the historically and socially constructed complexities of exploitation in paid domestic work, the chapterargues that the prevailing Western theories of this work are limited by their restricted focus on gender and race as the primary analytical categories.A more inclusive and globally relevant feminist approach would have an equivalent focus on class (and caste).