Enfleshing the Work of Social Production: Gender, Race and Agency

Abstract

The hidden dynamics of reproductive labor raise troubling moral questions related to labor exploitation, gender inequality and complicity in complex structures of injustice with far-reaching consequences. An intersectional analysis illuminates how beliefs and practices around sex and gender encode oppressive economic relations and how domestic workers’ race, gender and citizenship status compound their experiences of exploitation. Even as the pandemic has exacerbated intersectional inequalities, it offers an opportunity to examine the factors contributing to these entrenched patterns of exploitation and to consider how societies can return to a “new normal” in its aftermath. Toward that end, this article analyzes the structures and ideologies contributing to these entrenched patterns in order to frame them in terms of social injustice rather than isolated choices made by virtuous or vicious mothers alone. Next it considers how Catholic teaching both contributes to exploitation and offers resources for reform. A “new normal” will require significant changes in structures, incentives, ideologies, and formation, given the intersectional operations of power at play and their reinforcement by cultural and religious narratives alike.