"Working women": Gender, work and the politics of refusal Annual StAIGS Lecture: Asiya Islam

Dr Asiya Islam from the London School of Economics (LSE) will deliver the Third Annual St Andrews Institute for Gender Studies Lecture, entitled ‘”Working women”: Gender, work, and the politics of refusal'.

Popular discussions about the four-day working week, quiet quitting, and the great resignation following the Covid 19 pandemic indicate dissatisfaction with and changing attitudes towards contemporary waged work. And yet waged work remains central to the construction of the aspirational, entrepreneurial, hyper-industrious woman essential for development in the Global South.

In this lecture, Dr Islam will draw upon longitudinal ethnographic research with young women in Delhi, India to explore situated vocabularies of work as a window into changing understandings of work amidst a push towards increasing women's workforce participation. The distinction between different forms of work shows change in and reproduction of gender, class and caste relations, and is important for refusal of certain kinds of work.

To chart a path towards understanding everyday lives that are constituted through but also entail rejection of work, Dr Islam will put feminist scholarship that explores globalisation and gendered subjectivities into conversation with feminist engagements with antiwork politics.

This event is free and open to all. No booking is required.