TYRANNY OF HOUSEHOLD 131 joining me agricultural labour force. (b) the large-scale displacement of women workers owing to mechanisation and the industrial policies of the state which was leading to increasing unemployment, particularly among women. Why are no questions directed at state policies that are affecting the lives of men, women and children in our country, giving rise to increasing unemployment, illiteracy, malnutrition, decline in real wages, exploitation by the multinationals. Can all these issues be merely brushed aside and reduced to just 'sex bias" in official categories and the common belief and attitude of the society ? How does oti^charactrise such a society ? For the authors, there is no need to do so for their analysis is confined to sex discrimination, intra-household. Where are we being led to ? Whose interests are being served by atomising the issues ? Jain and Krisllmamurthy and Mukherjee's papers essentially deal with bringing into light the numerous productive tasks that women do, the methodology to be applied in collecting 'good' data on women: whether they be collected through close observation stretched over long period or short periods; and a methodology for evaluation of work— that is, attempts at a possible way of valuing women's labour. In a nutshell, .to casually play around with the concepts of use value nad exchange value. Although the book does provide interesting insights into the nature of oppression of women within the household, these insights are not developed to the level of any generalisation relevant to the women's movement. By using the most obvious unit of analysis-the household-the book gets caught in the day to day "routine of women's existence, and ignoring the whole nexus of economic and social relations in whicn such an existence is placed. This, unfortunately takes the book into a political cul-de-sac where neither debate nor action can be seriously pursued. JAYOTI GUPTA, Dept of Sociology, University of Delhi