The Unpaid “Native” Labor of the Settler Economy
The crippling cost of childcare exposes the patriarchal core of the bifurcated state. Mamdani’s focus on how power is organized finds a stark example here. Social reproduction–the work of creating and maintaining the labor force–is systematically offloaded onto women, treated as a “customary” duty rather than a social responsibility. 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. The Marxist-feminist solution is to de-privatize and collectivize social reproduction. We must demand a massive public investment in free, universal, high-quality childcare, run by well-compensated 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 and recognize it as the essential social infrastructure it is.
