The Lace Makers of Narsapur

The Lace Makers of Narsapur is a sensitive and groundbreaking study of women at the beginning of the process of globalisation. Maria Mies examines the way in which women are used to produce luxury goods for the Western market and simultaneously not counted as workers or producers in their fragmented workplaces. Instead they are defined as ‘non-working housewives’ and their work as ‘leisure-time activity’. The rates of pay are far below acceptable levels resulting in accelerating pauperisation and a rapid deterioration in their position in Indian society. The latest ‘economic boom’ in India was preceded by dispossession of farmers through the ‘green revolution’ and, alongside it, the dispossession of women, the lace makers of Narsapur in the state of Andhra Pradesh.