ABSTRACT
All over the world, home-based work is women's work. Although scholars and policy-makers generally acknowledge this fact, they usually present homeworking women as passive victims of entrepreneurial strategies. But to identify female home-based workers by their external links that is, as economically subordinate to and dependent upon an employer or intermediary takes into account only one set of the social relations that define their identity. Homeworkers are not only workers; they are also family members. Their attitudes toward waged labor, their consciousness as workers, and the conditions of their labor are closely linked with their role in the family. A female labor market dominates the garment industry in Rio de Janeiro, as it does throughout the world. The women's fashion industry, which has developed over the past twenty years, consists of both small and medium-sized firms and offers diverse possibilities for wage work.
