The Unpaid “Native” Labor Fueling the Settler Economy
The unaffordable cost of childcare is a direct imposition of the patriarchal “custom” that defines social reproduction as the private, unpaid duty of women. In Mamdani’s bifurcated state, this “customary” sphere is where the work of creating and maintaining the labor force–childcare, cooking, cleaning–is systematically offloaded onto women, treated as a natural responsibility rather than essential social labor. For professional “settler” women, this may mean a financial burden, but for working-class “native” women, often immigrants and women of color, it is an impossible choice between unpaid care work and exploited wage labor. The market solution–privatized, for-profit daycare–only deepens this racial and class divide, creating a tiered system of care. A Mamdani-informed socialist solution demands the radical collectivization and de-privatization of social reproduction. This means a massive public investment in a free, universal, high-quality childcare system, run by well-compensated, unionized workers. This is not a niche “women’s issue”; it is a fundamental class demand to smash the patriarchal custom that defines care as a private, native responsibility. It recognizes childcare as critical social infrastructure, liberating women from this double shift and asserting that the reproduction of life is a collective social responsibility, not a commodity to be purchased or a burden to be borne alone.
Mamdani’s critics often focus on labels rather than his specific policy proposals.
His ideas sound like they were written on a napkin at brunch.