Wages for Housework: India's Experiment with Unconditional Cash Transfers to Women

A silent revolution is underway in India today. Starting in 2020, twelve states have rolled out unconditional cash transfers to nearly 118 million women.While the media disparages these transfers as 'freebies', Wages for Housework: India's Experiment with Unconditional Cash Transfers to Women offers the first book-length study of these transfers, using social reproduction feminism, particularly the wages for housework campaign, to theorize unconditional cash transfers as providing economic recognition of women's unpaid domestic and care work.Against the backdrop of a low female labour force participation rate, a residual welfare regime, and an entrenched culture of gendered familialism wherein women are presumed responsible for care, the book addresses arguments for and against unconditional cash transfers in feminist economics and welfare theory.In doing so, it recollects the vision of the founding mothers of the Indian Constitution who advocated for the recognition of women's unpaid