ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that labor law institutionalizes an understanding of employees that tends to preclude home-based workers from its ambit. It also shows that the confusion about the employment status of homeworkers does not derive only from employers' self-interest and from public perceptions. Masculinist biases that permeate the law itself produce homeworkers' insecure status. Criteria used to test employee status often describe the situations of factory and office workers. In most countries around the world, homeworkers do not have a separate legal status and therefore have to fit the category of employee in order to qualify for protection under labor laws. In general, labor law distinguishes between employees and the self-employed by looking at the type of contracts that exist between workers and their work givers. The most common indicator of subordination, which is employed in both continental and common law, is whether a worker is under the control of an employer.
