REVIEW ARTICLE 95 the home and work place, the former as the site of use-value production and the latter as the same in exchange value production. Thus the housewife and house work acquire certain values and characteristics. Therefore it is not sexual division of labour that is the root cause of subordination but the relations of production to study the specifities of gender division and subordination. Under capitalism, gender is not culturaly free, since pre-capitalist cultural processes do carry over in various forms. As worker is pitted against worker in the labour market, we can see why the woman worker becomes an exploited and discriminatory category within the working class. The household therefore cannot be viewed outside of the system in which it is located. Even at a broad descriptive level housewifisation does not offer an adequate explanation. Therefore the core-periphery argument of world system models is rejected. The alternative analysis rests on conceptualised forms of gender oppression in the ensemble of class relations in order to see the dialectics of class structure and the social construction of gender—a construct that is both social and historical. Cho's analysis of the autonomy/subordination of women is conceptualised by relating women to the production system and its central and defining features. Her study of the community in Cheju Island is historicised to assess the transformation of gender relations, from the relatively egalitarian (even though male/female spheres of work were distinct) society to the capitalisation of the economy. Christina Szanton has examined family strategies with regard to inter-generational resource and investment allocation to study the gender impact. Her samples are chosen according to income/economic status criteria to determine class. Her vignettes of women's lives show how women of different classes organise the business of living. The Thai women, pauperised and forced to migrate, still continue to have the central responsibility for family subsistence. For the Sino-Thais, work is still a symbol of dependence and control by the male head of the family. Mascarenhas-Keys examines upper class Catholic Goans and the impact of migration, the only option available under Portugese colonialism. In the absence of the male, women assumed control of the household and its management, and adopted the concept of 'progressive motherhood' to increase opportunities for improved mobility for the next generation as well as the function of socialisation. It draws attention to the vulnerability of women who depend economically on remittances and have to organise the migration of future generations to ensure continued economic support. Lessinger describes the parallel and interacting processes of patriarchy and capitalism, and their impact on Madras women to draw attention to the interplay between ideology and material reality. The slum dweller extends the household to the market place via kinship linkages. Withdrawal of women from market based activity is therefore an assertion of class status. In gender terms, the ideological attribute of purity was common to all women even where there was no