.32' SOCIAL SCIENTIST different. Baud fails to explain such a situation because her only criterion is integration* of industries with the global market The divergent means of integration have been overlooked by her. The means and degree by which women's labour is exploited assures high profits and low labour costs to the capitalist, though these may vary according to the type of the capitalists. Our focus in this paper is to examine the ways in which women's labour is rec ruked for profit maximisation by the capitalists. Production Organisation and the Gender-based Division of Labour: Emerging Trends Women labour force in India form a small proportion of the country's total female population. According to 1981 census figures, only one-fifth of the total women are in the labour force; the remaining are not engaged in economically productive activities. In addition to the small proportion of working women, marginality is an important emerging phenomenon. Two-thirds of the women labour force are engagrd in full-time work, white the other one-third are classified as marginal workers. Marginal workers are those who have been economically active partially, but not throughout the year. Marginality is mainly a female phenomenon. While in the case of women the share of marginally occupied is one third in the case of men it is only one out of twenty five. Census data shows two important observations relating to work participation rates: 1) Women's work participation rate in the country as a whole has been significantly lower than that of men; and 2) the relative gap between men and women in this regard has been increasing in such a way that women's work participation rate has been markedly declining. Labour participation of women in Kerala also falls in line with the national trend; it has been declining practically all through the present cenury. In 1981, fewer women (17 per cent) were found to be economically active in Kerala than in the whole of India (21 per cent). Leela Gulati points out that this phenomenon has to be viewed in the light of the faster growth rate of population in Kerala upto 1970.17 This must be the reason why work participation rate has declined for both men and women in the State. Moreover, increasing literacy in the state, alternatively means that both males and females spend longer time in schools than in the rest of the country. The occupation-wise distribution of working women in Kerala shows two important findings: 1) One out of every 20 working women in the .state is classified as a cultivator, while at the all-India level, it is only one-third; and 2) In Kerala, more than four out of every 10 working women are engaged in non-agricultural activities and household industry, while in the country as a whole, only one-sixth of the working women are so occupied. The employment of a large proportion of women in the non-agricultural sector can be attributed to two factors: