WOMEN'S EXPLOITATION 31 Baud rightly points out that "productive work" offers women sotne 'means of emancipation.13 However, whether and to what degree such emancipation occurs depends to a large extent on the way in which production is organised. According to Baud, a relatively small part of industrial production and employment is geared towards the world market, and is experiencing growth with a concomitant increase in wage levels, wheteas a much larger portion of industrial production and employment is only indirecdy linked to the global production and trade system, and experiences much lower profits and, wage levels. It is this that leads to unequal distribution of employment and wage levels between two parts of the economy.14 Baud's analysis has certain limitations. One of the limitations relate to the identification of the formal sector with the export oriented sector. According to her, it is international capital accumulation which has led to the creation of a formal sector in developing countries. Entrepreneurs in the formal sector make use of the decentralised sector to cut down their own operating costs in machines and labour. This would imply a steady expansion of the informal sector rather than their gradual disappearance. Export-led growth, however, has not been the major aspect of growth of formal sector in India, although the strategy of export promotion has contributed to industrial growth as a whole. Moreover, contrary to Baud's argument, most export oriented industries in Kerala have been of the medium and small categories and which can be included in the informal sector both in terms of scale of operation and mode of production. This finding disproves Baud's argument that labour in the formal sector is an "aristocracy" which is well-paid and protected by labour legislation. What determines wage rates is not the size of the industry as such, but more importantly, it is the dominant mode of production. Even the formal sector employs large number of workers on contract basis, and therefore^ involves informal elements within it. If an industry in the formal sector is dominated by trading capital (and consequently engaged in 'sterile' activities), wa^e rates in its informal segment (that of contract labour) is likely to remain at the level of that of the informal sector establishments.15 It his to be noted that wage rates in the precapitalist segment as a whole is partly determined by the psychological attitudes of workers towards employment and wages.16 Where the formal sector is a small island, wages of the regularised workers in this sector, on the other hand, are influenced more by rates prevailing in the informal sector as a whole than by the formal sector in general. This is because effective trade unionism which helps to put up wage rates, is constrained both because of smaller number of regularised worker's and the way in which temporary (contract) workers are used as a weapon against the former. Because of these reasons, wage levels between the formal and informal sectors does not show substantial variations, especially in situations where trading capital is dominant. We have seen above a paradoxical rftuarion where wage rates remain relatively constant in both the purely export-oriented sector and that sector which is only indirecdy linked with the global market, though profit rates are