Mies’s theory of capitalist patriarchy has become even more relevant today.

Tracing the social origins of the sexual division of labour, it offers a history of the related processes of colonization and ‚housewifization‘ and extends this analysis to the contemporary new international division of labour. ‚It is my thesis that this general production of life, or subsistence production – mainly performed through the non-wage labour of women and other non-wage labourers as slaves, contract workers and peasants in the colonies – constitutes the perennial basis upon which „capitalist productive labour“ can be built up and exploited.‘įirst published in 1986, Maria Mies’s progressive book was hailed as a major paradigm shift for feminist theory, and it remains a major contribution to development theory and practice today. The critique is compelling.Women in the International Division of Labour Mies produces an alternative feminist concept of labour and some strategic elements of its implementation. Women cannot hope for justice from a mode of production built on subordination either as housewife in the West or cheap labour in the third world. * Off Our Backs * A major contribution to authentic development theory and practice. * New Internationalist * Feminist theory at its very best. Vandana Shiva, founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology and director at the International Forum on Globalization * Maria Mies' vision is huge, the scale of her project breathtakingly bold. Patriarchy and Accumulation is essential reading for all, more so today than when it was first written.

If you want to create alternatives and participate in shaping living economies, read this book. If you want to understand the roots of the economic crisis, and of violence against women, read this book. In showing the convergence between patriarchy and capitalism, she has pushed intellectual boundaries, and has enriched feminism, women's struggles, and movements for social and economic justice. * Deniz Kandiyoti, SOAS, University of London * In Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, Maria Mies drew connections between two structures of domination that had previously been viewed separately. One of the most ambitious projects undertaken by a feminist scholar in recent years.

Maria mies patriarchy and accumulation