Introduction
Feminisation of work, a sociological concept conceptualised by Guy Standing, carries a dual dimension: the growing participation of women in the paid labour force, and the qualitative transformation of jobs to resemble traditional female work patterns—characterised by informality, flexibility, low wages, and precariousness. In developing societies, this phenomenon is deeply intertwined with economic restructuring, agrarian shifts, and global capital flows.
Structural Implications of Feminisation of Work
In developing economies, the feminisation of labour operates across diverse sectors, generating complex socio-economic outcomes rather than straightforward empowerment:
- Feminisation of Agriculture: Driven by distress-induced, rural-to-urban male migration, women have increasingly shouldered agrarian management and labour. As sociologist Bina Agarwal highlights, despite undertaking substantial manual and managerial agricultural tasks, women rarely hold formal land titles. This institutional lack of tenure traps them as 'cultivators' rather than recognised 'farmers', severely limiting their access to institutional credit, agricultural extension services, and cooperative leadership.
- Export-Oriented Industrialisation and EPZs: Transnational supply chains and Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in developing countries deliberately recruit female labour under patriarchal assumptions of 'nimble fingers' and docility, as analysed by Naila Kabeer. Although industrial factory work affords women an independent wage and partial renegotiation of domestic authority, it concentrates them at the lowest, non-unionised rungs of production marked by occupational hazards, job insecurity, and suppression of collective bargaining rights.
- Global Care Chains and the 'Triple Role': As developing states pull back social welfare spending under fiscal constraints, women absorb the shock through expanded informal service and domestic work. Theorised by Caroline Moser through the framework of women's 'triple role' (productive, reproductive, and community management), this dynamic accentuates extreme time poverty, locking women into a dual burden where unpaid domestic labour subsidises the formal economy.
Conclusion
While the feminisation of work facilitates entry into the public domain and initial economic independence, it frequently replaces familial patriarchal domination with capitalist exploitation in deregulated markets. Achieving genuine emancipation requires gender-transformative structural reforms, including statutory joint land ownership, universal social security coverage, and the formalisation of care labour.