Finance, Production and Reproduction in the Context of Globalization and Economic Crisis

This paper analyses the gendered global interaction of the spheres of finance, production and reproduction in the context of the financial crisis in 2008/9. It examines the gendered origins of the crisis in the West; and the gendered impact of the crisis in Asia. It argues that the crisis was generated by an economic system in which fi nance had come to dominate over production and reproduction; and in which the safety nets of last resort have been provided by unpaid work in the sphere of reproduction. It suggests that securing a more gender-equitable recovery from the crisis in Asia requires more than changing the gender-division of labour and gender norms in production. It requires a more fundamental reorganization of the relations between the three spheres, so that finance and production serve the needs of reproduction, the sphere in which the care essential to human well-being is provided