Social Reproduction and the IT Women

Women IT workers form a critical section of the IT workforce of India. The kind of work that women do, both as workers and as individual citizens, makes them a highly exploited section of the IT workforce. The distinctive nature of women workers in the IT sector stems from the reproductive labour that women perform. Reproductive labour usually has three components, household labour, care work, and the labour of people-making. This chapter begins from problematising the processes through which each and every aspect of one’s everyday life becomes a potential source of profit accumulation and oppression. The chapter then looks at the phenomenon of social practices and their routinisation under contemporary capitalism and the relationship that it shares with the dynamics of reproductive labour. Taking such aspects into cognisance, the chapter argues about the necessity of structures of social solidarity.