Role of Women in Today's Global Division of Labour - Research Paper Example

This adage would be the best comment to explain in a nutshell what this essay would be about. On reviewing through history, it could be better understood that as time has changed dramatically, so has the women folks. From the days of Neanthedrals to the present-day stage of Homo sapiens, women have evolved a lot, faced many ups and downs. Though it sounds like feminist theory, facts are far from it. From the stage of bread, toaster women have traveled to the stage of being the breadwinner. For this, she has to cross stages from an informal worker, helper in agricultural areas, and small-scale industry worker to a stage of corporate leader to entrepreneur.

But through all these phases the one thing that didn’t change much is the gender-based discrimination and gender-based division of labor she faces.  2 The role played by women force in today's global division of labor: 2.1 The concept of Labour & Division of labor: The Webster dictionary gives the definition of labor as, a social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages. Thus in lay men’s words, it could be understood as any work done for wages. As the concept of labor emerged and when a man tried to find maximum profit in everything from minimum time, the concept of division of labor emerged.

The division of labor means the separation of the workforce into different categories of labor i.e. in lay terms it means that the essential work that is needed to be done is divided into parts and is made to be done by different workers, instead of a single person doing it. An interesting anthropological study points out that only when the concept of diversified social roles for men, women, and children evolved, mankind has moved from the stage of Neanderthals to Homo sapiens.  The study further argues that division of economic labor by sex and age emerged relatively recently in human evolutionary history and facilitated the spread of modern humans throughout Eurasia.

(Froebel et al.,2003)