Social Reproduction and Inequality in Feminist Political Economy

‘Social reproduction’ has emerged as a concept that is central to feminist political economy. This chapter reviews the feminist political economy approach to inequality, with a particular focus on how this literature connects the concept of social reproduction to an intersectional understanding of inequality under capitalism, expanding inequality to include inequality in time use. The thesis that emerges from the feminist political economy literature with respect to inequality, is that the under-valuation of the labour of social reproduction is a critical driver of intersectional patterns of inequality today. And furthermore, this under-valuation of the labour of social reproduction is deeply rooted in the logic of capitalist accumulation.