10 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
of labour aristocracy. The bourgeoisie to some extent shared with the male white (local) labour force a small part of the surplus accumulated not only from exploiting the Third World but also by underpayment of wages to the growing labour force of minority races and women. This form of surplus value is indispensable for the functioning of even a developed capitalist economy. Women joined the labour force to produce commodities for the capitalist market, but continued to be housewives. As housewife a woman provides free labour in her household and is said to have indirectly contributed to the production of capital—though not directly to surplus value.8 This double burden has almost broken her back, but simultaneously built a new consciousness in the western woman.
Marginal Jobs
In this article we are only concerned with the mode of utilization of female labour, in the "first" and the ^third"4 worlds for appropriation of surplus value and the forms of exploitation, mainly of two kinds: one, by marked wage differentials, done blatantly at all levels even in the most advanced countries like the USA; and second, by utilizing women as a reserve army of labour(either for increasing production as and when additional labour force is necessary during war and capitalist expansion or for ^wzito^ ^r^w^&l\^^^^lo^i^^ d^ruv^ p^tiod^ of 6ill ^m.plov^en.t to break the bargaining power and potential of labour movements). European women trade unionists in close touch with the working class are acutely conscious that women form no more than ^'a safety valve for labour market,"5 and today their position is precarious when recession is threatening.6 A built-in structural bias in the system of education7 combined with a suitable ideology is made to operate in such a way as to make a woman's job both ^economically and technologically marginal.558 This is aLo achieved by feminization and masculinization of available jobs.
We have to consider factors which have made women marginal in the labour market. Recessions are a constant threat to the capitalist societies as well as to the Third World. Capitalist societies are also "dominantly" patriarchal in ideology. As recession hits employment, ground has to be prepared for all eventualities. The bourgeoisie, therefore, has revived the ideology that it is unnatural for women to work when men are idle. A number of Third World countries have both patriarchal and matrilineal traditions; such historical facts are irrelevant when the two worlds are linked and one is dependent on the other. Yet one must remember that the industrial bourgeoisie, at the height of Industrial Revolution in England, did not hesitate to snatch children from their cradles and put them to work along with their mothers at low wages, and deliberately left the men idle and unemployed. Ideology9 and the necessity for primitive accumulation do not necessarily coincide. This is further confirmed by their action in the colonies.
During Colonial Expansion
In the period of imperialist expansion, the bourgeoisie Utilized the