ABSTRACT
Contemporary Marxist feminists (Dalla Costa 1972; Bennholdt-Thomsen 1981) have picked up Rosa Luxenburg’s focus on expanded reproduction as they underscore the importance of housework to the process of capital accumulation. Feminist studies of Latin America (Beneria 1992; León de Leal and Deere 1980; Collins and Gimenez 1990) demonstrate the contribution to gross domestic product of women’s work in semi-subsistence cultivation, artisan production, and housework. The multiplicity of household activities women perform in subsistence as well as artisan production ensures the reproduction of campesino society (Cook 1984; Deere 1990; Nash 1982, 1993; Stephen 1991). Since women’s contributions have not been valorized in market calculations, development programs ignore women’s unpaid work, further undermining the subsistence structures within which they operate.
