ABSTRACT
Feminist scholars have highlighted that gendered divisions of labour and gender hierarchies underlie all forms of capitalism. This chapter seeks to extend this analysis by examining how the introduction of biocapitalist elements into this framework affects the relationship between gender and class. The first part of the chapter utilises expert interviews with experienced Lean instructors to investigate how gender influences the implementation of Lean in welfare service work. Analysis reveals that the integration of gendered power dynamics into the biocapitalist logic of value creation results in a process of hybrid masculinisation. The second part of the chapter delves into the underlying dynamics of biocapitalism and hybrid masculinities, highlighting the classed nature of gender and work and tracing the translations that travel primarily in a ‘vertical’ direction. Finally, the chapter raises troubling questions about the role of gender in biocapitalism in general and welfare service work in particular: whether it is possible to domesticate and translate gender as a field of structured and structuring difference that vibrates in both intimate lives and global omissions? Are there ways in which gender enables affective, intellectual, and practical forces, rather than controlling and exploitative forces?
