A foundational asymmetry: gender, unpaid care work, and the market economy

Naila Kabeer

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The structures of patriarchy are characterized by considerable variety across the world, but they have one feature in common which appears with monotonous regularity across a range of different contexts: an asymmetrical gender division of labour which assigns primary responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work to women and girls within the household while giving men privileged access to material resources and economic opportunities. This asymmetry, and the form that it takes in different contexts, is foundational to the varying patterns of gender injustice we see across the world. This paper focuses on how it shapes various forms of gender disadvantage in the economic domain and its implications for gendered risks of poverty and illbeing.

Keywords: unpaid and domestic work; labour markets; vertical and horizontal segregation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 J70 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2026-03-02
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Published in Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2, March, 2026, 41(3-4), pp. 702 - 717. ISSN: 0266-903X

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