Gender(ed) Labor

Gender(ed) Labor examines how gender shapes work, how work is valued, and how laboring lives are experienced across a wide range of social settings. Moving beyond the divide between paid and unpaid labor, the volume traces the ways intimate relations are entangled with institutions and capitalist dynamics. The chapters show how inequalities are produced through law and policy, as well as through workplace arrangements and everyday interactions. Drawing on case studies that range from family wealth arrangements to welfare systems, and from activist spaces to retail work, the book follows the many settings in which labor is defined and contested. It treats labor not only as a site of exploitation, but also as a site of resistance, showing how workers and activists challenge established expectations around gender and productivity. Grounded in feminist and materialist scholarship, Gender(ed) Labor rethinks what counts as work and whose labor comes to matter. It offers a critical perspective on contemporary regimes of value while pointing toward more just ways of organizing work and social life.