ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how struggles within the labour process intersect with those in the local community and the household, and how gender meanings shape the struggles on these interconnected sites. This gendered analysis of class formation calls for a major rethinking of James Scott's notion of 'everyday forms of peasant resistance'. The chapter focuses on the key features of gender ideology and political economy in the Malaysian context form. It traces the evolution of gender differences in labour relations in the Muda region of Malaysia. The chapter shows how the gender-differentiated 'politics of production' connects with political patronage and domestic politics, and how these struggles are conditioned by the interplay of gender ideology and larger political-economic structures and processes. For a more progressive, class-based politics to emerge, the ideologies of race and ethnicity through which the co-optation is perpetuated need also to be deconstructed.
