New Book published on India’s Wages for Housework campaign

Please see new book by Prabha Kotiswaran – Wages for Housework: India’s Experiment with Unconditional Cash Transfers to Women. Available Open Access from Oxford University Press. The link for download is at https://academic.oup.com/book/62989

Part I sets out the normative case for unconditional cash transfers to women by engaging with debates in feminist economics, feminist theories of the welfare state and Indian courts’ economic recognition of women’s unpaid work. Part II offers empirical insights into unconditional cash transfer schemes to women in three states, Goa, Assam and West Bengal channeling what women themselves thought of the cash transfers. Part III returns to the law and assesses India’s care jurisprudence and why we need a Care Manifesto to embed the rights of women who perform reproductive labour whether for the family, market or state in the law to realise the Constitution’s promise of equality.

The print version and other e-versions of the book will be available in August 2026. Mrinalini Godara beautifully adapted a badge from the Wages for Housework New York Collective (1973) for the book cover.