ABSTRACT
Feminist theory is becoming increasingly sensitive to the complex interrelations of race, gender and class. Feminists in South Africa are forced "to recognize that white women stand in a power relation as oppressors of black women". In South Africa poverty, labor controls and a lack of employment alternatives combine to "trap" about one million black women in domestic service. Influx control operates very coercively upon African women and binds domestic servants especially tightly. While waged employment of African women in South Africa has risen in recent years, the expansion of employment opportunities has not eroded women's disadvantages. Many working class housewives are separated not only from the means of production, but also from the means of exchange. The employment of domestic servants has softened the tension experienced by many women in advanced capitalist societies between their roles in social production as wage workers and their roles in reproduction as domestic workers.
