In What Way Do Class and Gender Interact to Generate Economic Inequality in Market Societies?

It was the political journalist, George Megalogenis who wrote in his book Fault Lines that it was ‘wogs and women’ who laboured to create modern Australia (2003, p.28). Megalogenis posits ‘wogs’ as the low paid, unskilled or under-skilled ‘working’ class, post World War II migrants. The Marxist principle of a reserve army of labour – which includes unskilled as well as casual or precarious labour and women – proposes that, as supply of labour is constant and abundant; the wages of this group are kept low. Horizontal inequality has resulted from women’s double burden of being underpaid for performing the same private work as men as well as the seemingly sole responsibility of unpaid, domestic labour. Concurrently, ongoing engendered disadvantage is on display in the high levels of vertical inequality whereby opportunities for the advancement of women within market society and the broader economy are stifled. These issues are further propagated by state policies that, for example, attach parental leave payment levels to the lower income of the household further relegating women to the lowest pay levels and entrenching the inequity that the gender pay gap creates. Attempts at economic empowerment and longer term prosperity that come from uninterrupted engagement in the workforce as enjoyed by men are further sabotaged by this disincentive. This essay will argue that both classism and gender based inequity have intersected to create serious financial and social disadvantage to women. Moreover, this paper will explore how both formal and informal institutions; structure and agency - whilst providing basic rights - have intertwined to create ongoing class and gender based inequality for women within market society.

Karl Marx’ theory of the relations of production can be used as an important platform in locating the origins of class and gender inequity to the early stages of capitalism. In his theory ‘the relations of production’ he explained that private ownership of