ABSTRACT
Diasporic South Asian women are often constructed in policy documents and popular media as invisible or as an accompaniment to their husbands, fathers or sons, not as workers or community builders in their own right but more as dependent members of families, shadows of their male protectors. In the post-1980s period and up to the present conjuncture, the political economy of the world has been increasingly characterized as a neoliberal capitalist economy. South Asian women's work experiences in the diaspora is discussed in this chapter. The chapter draws on secondary literature from Canada, the USA and the UK. Diasporic South Asian women living with their families find themselves faced with a double day of work, fulfilling both paid and unpaid reproductive work of childcare, homemaking and 'being the wife'. The chapter demonstrates that diasporic South Asian women have played a significant role as paid workers in the labour market and have been anything but 'passive victims'.
