Reproductive Labor
재생산 노동
A core concept in Marxist feminism referring to the unpaid domestic work (cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, and caregiving) necessary for the daily and generational reproduction of labor power. While capitalism recognizes only waged (productive) labor as value-creating, reproductive labor is concealed in the private sphere, performed without compensation, and disproportionately assigned to women. Its material foundation was first analyzed in Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, and it was theorized as a constitutive condition of capitalist accumulation through the 1970s Wages for Housework campaign and the work of Silvia Federici and others.
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- Wikipedia (EN) defines reproductive labor as care giving and domestic housework roles (cleaning, cooking, child care, unpaid domestic labor); traces its emergence in feminist philosophy; notes Marxist anthropologists argue it creates value by increasing the value of labor power.
- Wikipedia (KO) Korean-language article defining 재생산노동 as 청소, 요리, 육아, 무급 가사 노동; notes the term's role in feminist philosophy drawing attention to how women are assigned to the domestic sphere.
- radicalphilosophy.com Silvia Federici (2019) traces the revolutionary discovery of the 1970s Wages for Housework theorists: that unpaid labor is extracted from millions of unwaged house-workers; redefines the wage as a creator of labor hierarchies.
- caringlabor.wordpress.com Federici argues Marx's analysis was hampered by its focus on commodity production and blindness to women's unpaid reproductive work in capitalist accumulation.