Study Questions for

Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale
Chapter 2: Social Origins of the Sexual Division of Labour

What is biological determinism? How has it been used to justify women's oppression?

What happens when women's household and child-care work are seen as extensions of their physiology?

How does Maria Mies use the word "exploitation"?

Why is women's productive labour invisible?

Compare women and men's object-relations to nature.

Why is female productivity seen as the precondition of male productivity?

How are women's tools different from men's tools? How is the difference a factor in women's eventual oppression?

What does Mies mean when she says, "one could say that to the same degree that the workers of the European centre state acquired their 'humanity,' were 'humanized,' or 'civilized'; the workers, men and women, in the peripheries, in Eastern Europe and the colonies were 'naturalized''?