Received: 1 December 2018 Revised: 23 January 2019 Accepted: 24 January 2019

DOI: 10.1111/lands.12399

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Gender and class: An interview with

Tithi Bhattacharya
Paula Varela

Associate Professor of Sociology at the

Universidad de Buenos Aires. Researcher at the
Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Laborales of
the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones
Científicas y Técnicas - CEIL-CONICET-,
Argentina
Tithi Bhattacharya is Professor of South Asian History at
Purdue University. She is the editor of Social reproduc-
tion theory: Remapping class, recentering oppression
(Pluto Press, 2017). As Lise Vogel says in the Foreword,
“Social Reproduction Theory is probably the first book to
draw on the past decade's resurgent interest in developing
a coherent Marxist-feminist understanding of everyday
life under capitalism (…) The ten essays in Social Repro-
duction Theory address a range of questions. But one way
or another, each contributor tackles the thorny problem of
explaining just what social reproduction theory is.” The
importance of this book is given not only by the content
of its articles but also by the context in which this work is
developed: The rise of a new feminist wave in the back-
drop of the current crisis of capitalism. In this talk, Bhatta-
charya exposes her points of view about the current
relations between gender and class, the possibilities of an
anticapitalist feminism, and the necessity of strengthening
the working class.

PV: In your book you say: “I am proposing here three things: (a) a theoretical restatement of
the working class as a revolutionary subject; (b) a broader understanding of the working class
than those employed as waged laborers at any given moment; and (c) a reconsideration of class
struggle to signify more than the struggle over wages and working conditions.” I would like to
organize the interview in around that affirmation. First, the idea of the working class as a revo-
lutionary subject is not a very common point of view in the feminist movement, and one might
suppose that it is not even spread in the feminism for the 99%. What does the defense of that
proposal mean in the context of feminists' debates today?
TB: Thanks for the question, I think it is a very important one. I´m not sure there is a particular
difference between this point of view of working class power and the working class's ability to
change the world and the idea of the feminism for the 99% coming out for the Women´s Strike in
2017. It was precisely to ground this idea of the working class power. Because feminism, particularly
in the United States and Northern Europe, but also in a large part of the globe (I work very closely

© 2019 Immanuel Ness and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Labor and Society. 2019;1–8. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/lands 1
2 VARELA

with feminists in India where I come from), and the idea of feminism during the period of neoliberal-
ism was transformed by neoliberals to argue that feminism constituted this vague understanding of
“empowerment”. That idea of “empowerment” was immune from questions, for instance, whose
empowerment and to what end. Those are the questions that neoliberalism kind of silenced. So, femi-
nism came to be nearly conceived as the empowerment of women which in real terms translated to the
empowerment of a tiny upper section of rich women across the world. So, feminism came to be success
within the capitalist structures: success as politicians, success as business women, success as corporate
CEOs, and so on. When women climbed these ladders and succeeded, that was considered a win for
feminism. Whereas the real issue was that for the vast majority of women, we're talking actually the
majority of women globally, neoliberalism has meant an absolute immiseration of women´s living con-
ditions and working conditions. So I think that was the stronger point for feminism for the 99%. That if
feminism is going to become a threat to sexism and capitalist violence again, rather than a handmaiden
to capitalist development, then feminism has to be for the 99% rather than feminism for the 1%. So, that
understanding is actually very closely tied to the question of working class power. I think there is a the-
oretical issue here that needs to be unpacked and there is a political issue. The theoretical issue is that
for a long time both within liberal and some Marxist understandings of class and social movements
there has been a theoretical separation between what are considered class issues and what are consid-
ered issues of social oppression. We are understood through our oppression rather than through our
class location. That´s a theoretical problem that I think Social Reproduction Theory as a book tries to
highlight and challenge that the understanding of gender, race, ability, and so on must be understood as
imbricated in class formation. Those two are not separate issues. So that's the theoretical part. The stra-
tegic conclusions that one draws from that is that because these are class issues, struggles to ameliorate
conditions of social oppression, struggles that challenge social oppression are also class struggles. So
the understanding that class struggle is limited to struggles for the wage or struggles within the work-
place needs to be challenged. In the neoliberal era, living conditions have simultaneously deteriorated
alongside of working conditions. The two are related and in fact the vulnerability of the living condi-
tions makes you more vulnerable in the workplace. If you don't have immigration security, then it's
much easier for the boss to fire you. Or if you're a woman, for the boss to sexually harass you. So the
immigration issue and fighting against immigration raids cannot be separated from the fight to unionize
in the workplace because those two are imbricated struggles. That was the strategic implication of hav-
ing this more embedded understanding of the working class, which integrated understandings of race,
gender, ability, or social oppression understood as a whole, that we tried to do in the book.
PV: Related to this more embedded understanding of the working, in the book you say this
is a “broader” definition of working class. I would like to know “broader” related to what or
whose definition: Marx? Some Marxists? Union Leaders?
TB: There is a lot of use of the prefix “re” in my book Social Reproduction Theory, because we
understand this theoretical understanding not so much as new but as a recovery of the classical Marx-
ist tradition. So in that sense it's very much rooted in Marx, perhaps underdeveloped in Marx, but
very much rooted in the central understandings of historical materialism. So the core idea there is that
in Capital Volume I, in all three volumes of Capital, and in several other places, Marx develops an
understanding of the motor of capitalism. What is the dynamic that propels the system forward? And
the motor is located in the production of commodities by the working class in the workplace, which
allows the capitalist to extract surplus value through that process. So it's not an extra economic pro-
cess like previous modes of production. The exploitation and the extraction of profit and surplus
value are done through the economic motor of making the worker work either longer or more in order
to make profit for the boss. So this is the starting point. But there are several places in Marx, for
VARELA 3

instance The German Ideology, where Marx and Engels are basically saying that all of this happens
in order for the worker to live because, at some point, this is the inception of the system. The worker
had to be separated from her means of living, if we all had access to reproducing our lives then we
wouldn't have to work for our bosses. So no one is going to go to a horrible 9 to 5 job or increasingly
many more hours than 9 to 5 jobs if we had access to making our own food and leading our own
lives. So at a particular juncture in capitalism history, the working class had to be separated or vio-
lently torn away from her means of production which is why the worker is dependent on the capital-
ists to reproduce her life. So she sells her labor power or capacity to labor in order to make a living.
That story of capitalism begins when the worker begins work and that story of labor power takes
labor power as a given. But in Social Reproduction Theory we are taking a step back and saying:
“OK, so the labor power is not given, it has to be reproduced.” There are numerous social processes
that go into that reproduction of the labor power, it is not given because if we took labor power as
given, then we would add the labor power of every human would be the labor power of a newborn
because that's the “given” labor power. But, obviously, labor power is fashioned, shaped, produced,
honed by us within the family and within the social networks that we belong to for many many years
and it's an ongoing process to make us into workers. Becoming wage slaves for capital is not a natu-
ral thing. We have to be made into it, so certain capacities are actually emphasized or deemphasized
by capitalist social relations in order for us to become workers. So all the instincts you have for soli-
darity toward your fellow workers have to be deemphasized and that's what capitalist labor market
competition is. That competition deemphasizes your actual instincts of solidarity and emphasizes
your instincts of competition. So, again, none of these are natural processes. These are all social pro-
cesses. Social Reproduction Theory makes us look at those. I like to think of Social Reproduction
Theory as an extremely elaborate theoretical mechanism of unpacking. We are constantly unpacking
all the naturalized philosophical and political categories that capitalism presents us with. We are con-
stantly unpacking and saying “wait, this is not a given, let us look at the constitutive ingredients that
makes it so,” labor power as one of them. Then we have the question to consider what kind of social
processes makes labor power so. There is, obviously, a biological process which makes labor power
so you give birth and then you are socialized. In most families, we don't start socializing our child
saying: “marriage, monogamy are terrible institutions and we should grow up questioning these.”
Some of us obviously talk to our children about these things once they are mature enough to handle
such questions, but we don't start there. In other words, we socialize the child into capitalist social
relations because we have to. Then we socialize that child into schools and into health-care facilities,
and when I mention these more institutional mechanisms of socialization, we immediately realize that
these are differentiated: Certain neighborhoods will have certain kinds of schools and other neighbor-
hoods will have better schools. We are talking about differential reproduction of labor power. Some
labor power is honed or socialized to go to Harvard while some labor power is honed or socialized to
become a construction worker. So, when we say labor power is reproduced it's not a simple process,
we need to look at the various social institutions that reproduce labor power. But now, we begin to
understand that the reproduction of labor power is also the production of the capitalist social rela-
tions. Both of those are intricately braided: the production of commodities in the workplace and the
production of labor power or the worker outside of the workplace have to be linked processes, other-
wise capitalist social relations will become unstable. So, in order to ensure its own stability, there has
to be a systemic connection between how labor power is reproduced in what venues, for instance that
“kinship based family” has to be stable in order for the next generation to be socialized. Feminists in
Argentina are such an inspiration right now because that is precisely one of the things that you guys
are fighting. Capitalist politicians and the Catholic Church are basically pushing for a strengthening
of the family unit through the abortion question. That women have to be mothers is a forced
4 VARELA

understanding of women's relationship to our bodies and to the family unit. Argentina obviously is
not alone in this. Every single capitalist country has a family-friendly policy, it's just a matter of
degree how much they shove that down our throats.
PV: Well, there is an interesting issue about this in Argentina. The leaders of the Confed-
eración General del Trabajo (CGT), the most important Union Confederation in the country,
made a public declaration saying that if abortion was legalized in Argentina, the health-care
system that depends on Unions could collapse because they would not have funds enough to
affront the abortion costs. They didn´t stand openly against the legalization of abortion but they
did through this declaration. Do you think that legalization of abortion is a demand that must
be raised by unions?
TB: Absolutely. I think that unions, not just unions but any labor movement whether you have
unions or not, should absolutely take up the question of abortion. Without right over our reproductive
capacity, we have reduced rights over our productive capacity. So those battles cannot be separated
at all. And I think we are at our weakest in the feminist movement as well as the labor movement, if
unions disavow those struggles. Similar to racism, it is basically weakening the union if the union
steps back from those struggles, because I think abortion rights is such an important arena of empow-
erment for working class women. And I don't know what the figures are in Argentina, you will know
very well, but in the United States it is a straightforward class battle because rich people can afford
abortion, that is just the simple truth. Planned Parenthood is the institution that most assists in abor-
tion and has been receiving so much violence from the State and from antiabortionists. The vast
majority of women who access the services of Planned Parenthood are poor and women of color.
Sixty percent of people accessing abortion services are women of color. So this is a straightforward
class issue for working class women. And if you think about it, the question of giving birth to a child
or not giving birth to a child is completely a working class issue. How are you going to feed the
child? That's the first question which then is tied to what kind of a job you have, then is tied to what
kind of health care can you access even if you have a job. Can you actually give birth? Can you ges-
tate for 9 months to give birth? In my case, I had gestational diabetes, that's an exceptionally expen-
sive condition to have in the United States. And if I didn't have insurance I don't know what would
have happened. So there's the question of health care to gestate the baby and then ultimately to give
birth. Once the baby is born, how will you feed it, do you have a home for it? It's also tied to other
issues. Is the baby going to be taken away from you at the border by the immigration authorities like
Trump is doing? All of these issues are actually reproductive issues. They are not separate because
the birth of the baby is not just a women's question. Babies are birthed by women identified bodies,
but the question of giving birth is an absolutely social question.
PV: In the book you argue that production of commodities and reproduction of labor power
are two separate but intricately related “circuits,” and you put that the second one (reproduc-
tion circuit where all these issues like abortion appears) is subordinated to the first one (pro-
duction circuit). Could you explain that relationship? What does that subordination mean?
TB: In just Marxist terms, to say it simply, the workers’ labor power is harnessed to produce com-
modities in the workplace, but the reproduction of labor power happens outside of the commodity
production circuit. So those two circuits are obviously connected the way we talked about earlier, but
they are separate circuits, so to speak. They are related circuits, but separate circuits. What are the
features of this separation? Within the workplace, capital has full control and domination over the
workers’ activities. But that is not the case for the reproduction of labor power. Capitalism, of course,
because it's a systemic totality, has influence and dominance over the circuit of reproduction of labor
power, but it does not have full control. For instance, although most of the politicians would like to,
they can't actually come into our homes and dictate how we live. They try in various ways: These
VARELA 5

abortion laws, justification of rape, strengthening of sexism, these are the various ways that capital-
ism tries to have control over the circuit of reproduction. But it still does not have full control. So no
matter what the abortion laws are, no matter how strong the Catholic Church is, women and men still
have sex for pleasure, they don't just have sex only for reproduction. People still say “no, I am not a
heterosexual woman, I am a trans person”. So human beings constantly express their actual human
potential in myriad ways. Those things happen all the time. I'm not saying, by the way, that being a
lesbian or being a trans person is in itself a challenge to capitalism. Of course, it isn´t. It can be, in a
movement sense, that the trans-movement is a challenge to capitalism, but an individual person
becoming trans does not necessarily challenge capitalism. The point I'm trying to make is that these
social relations, these emotional affective developments continue despite capitals’ attempts to regu-
late it or dominate it. And the reason that domination or regulation is never complete and is always a
matter of contestation, is because of the way the system is set up. Capitalism does not have full con-
trol over the reproduction of labor power. It has to leave it to workers to work out the best way to fit
into this system. And because it is lax and there is a certain degree of autonomy, all kinds of subver-
sive things can happen in this sphere as well. Again, it is not to say subversive things do not happen
in the sphere of work, that's exactly what a strike is. I am saying that there the subversion happens
against direct control of capital, whereas in the sphere of social reproduction, the subversion and
assertions happen despite the lack of full control of capital.
PV: This idea of the differences between the two spheres makes me think about what John
Womack called “strategic position and workers strength” to talk about the “places” where the
working class was stronger to fight against capital. How do you think the relation between
production and reproduction circuits from the point of view of workers’ strength to beat the cap-
ital or damage capitalism? Are the two circuits equal from the point of view of the “harmfulness”
of the working class? Are a factory strike, a metro strike, or a household strike equivalent?
TB: As a Marxist I believe that the most power for the working class is in the workplace: that’s
where a collective power of the class is strongest and that's where the potential to damage and close
down the system is greatest, because in the workplace, if the worker stops work, we are stopping the
motor of the system which is extraction of surplus value. All of these exist in order for the system to
make surplus value. If you stop this extraction of surplus value, the system has to close down. So, I
believe that the strategic importance of a workplace is different and is far more powerful in a way
than nonworkplace struggles. That's simply in terms of what is most damaging to the system as a
whole. However, we cannot see it in a stagist way, that there are stages to the struggle. The reason
why I think this is a very important question at the moment is because globally the power of unions
and, hence, the power of workers in the workplace is not just diminished, but nonexistent in large
swaths of the globe. For instance, two of the largest economies, which are India and China, the power
of unions in those workplaces is minimal. There is a vast informal sector in India where people have
never heard of the Union. We are talking about a period of 40 years where capital has waged a relent-
less battle against unions in the workplace and diminished their power. In those kinds of circum-
stances, we can say two things as organizers. We can say “we will wait for that mythical golden
moment when unions are rebuilt,” that's one leftist position that all power must come from the
unions, so all our struggles must be to rebuild the union movement, and that's all we focus on and
concentrate on, every other struggle should be subordinate to that struggle. The right-wing position
would be the working class is finished, there is going to be no collective fightback against capital
anymore because the union movement is finished. Those are the two possible responses to the weak-
ened position of working class people in the workplace. I think we, as Marxist feminist, take a very
different position. We say: why do people go to work? People do not go to work in order to have
money. People go to work in order to live. So the wage form intervenes between the human being
6 VARELA

and her life making, the wage is just in between. That's why people concentrate on the wage. I think,
as Marxists, sometimes we forget, and bosses of the unions definitely forget, that it is not the wage
that concerns the worker. It is what the wage can achieve, which is life. So when conditions of life
worsens for working class people, struggle erupts. It doesn't matter that the working class cannot fight
back in the workplace because collective power has been drained, the working class still fights back
in the neighborhoods, in rent struggles, for clean water and in that struggle, I think, confidence is
built up of the class as a whole, such that it can then translate back into the workplace. As Marxists,
if you take a long view, we have seen that the development of working class consciousness can hap-
pen in myriad ways. It can happen simultaneously that workplace struggles kick off alongside of
social movements. But sometimes, there are no social movements, just strikes, and this wave of
strikes and working class power can build a clear anti-imperialist consciousness, and consequently an
anti-war movement. But the reverse can happen if you take away the strike weapon, social move-
ments can actually build the confidence for the working class to strike at work. For instance, if you
are a worker in a rented apartment and the union goes in to organize you in your workplace, you
might think, in a neoliberal condition: “I don't see my interest in joining a union.” But then your land-
lord raises the rent or kicks you out, you're a mother or you're a parent, and so your family and your
life comes under threat, and then the union comes and says: “I will help you organize against the
landlord in your neighborhood.” Then the worker might think: “OK, this is really about my life. I
want to work with this union.” And that's where the confidence is built in the union. So when the
union says “well, you know, if we have higher wages then it will be easier to have better rents,” then
the worker might consider joining the union because the union has now participated in harsh social
struggle in order to have her trust and build confidence in unions. And I think this kind of class strug-
gle unionism is the way to go in the neoliberal period because it rebuilds the union/labour movement
globally, we can't limit our imagination and our political horizons to the workplace alone. We must
address the worker in her entire life world.
PV: In this movement from nonworkplace struggles to workplace struggles, from social
issues that are not seen as class struggles (although they are) to struggles at the strategic posi-
tion of production, do you think women workers have a specific role? I’m thinking that women
are half of the working class and we are the vast majority of social reproduction workers (paid
and unpaid reproduction work), so do you think that this fact puts the women in a better condi-
tion to be the main character of this way of rebuilding confidence in unions and rebuilding
working class consciousness? Or do you think this could be an essentialist hypothesis?
TB: I don't think it's essentialist at all. I think it is important because those are the kind of things
we discussed previously. First of all, there's the numerical question that a significant majority of
workers are women in all sectors. That's just a numbers issue that we should consider. But I think
there is a deeper structural issue here that has made women-led struggles take center stage in recent
years, and that structural issue is that neoliberalism in the 40 years has led to a vicious attack on the
living standards of workers: health care, pensions, schools, water charges. These all privatizations of
resources that human beings need to reproduce ourselves have been at the forefront of neoliberal
attacks. It means for 40 years our capacity to reproduce ourselves has been attacked by neoliberalism,
and because of sexism women have been at the forefront of bearing the brunt of these attacks. When
you privatize your water the most affected people are women, when you close down schools the most
affected are women, when health care is privatized or taken away, women (who are the caregivers in
families and neighborhoods) are the most affected. Forty years of neoliberalism has seen this attack
on social reproduction which has had severely gendered consequences, and I think that needs to be
talked about far more than unions and Marxists talk about. The crash of 2008 dealt a severe blow to
neoliberal consensus. But if you look at movements prior, sort of 10 years before 2008 and 10 years
VARELA 7

after 2008, you will see how intensely gendered they are. They are often led by women or the vast
majority of participants in these social movements are women and the issues that they bring up are all
issues which have severe consequences for women. We're not talking about necessarily feminist issues.
That's why I think feminism for the 99% makes perfect sense. In this vision of feminism one cannot
talk about improving the condition of women, unless one attacks the very system that creates the con-
ditions of immiseration for women. And that system is capitalism. I think we need to discard this idea
that feminism is about women alone. Feminism is about gender, and gender is at the heart of how capi-
talism reproduces itself. So unless men and women of all sexualities and persuasions and abilities
joined together in this battle, then it's actually for feminism. If your feminism is for CIS women alone,
or for citizens alone, then that is not a feminism, that is simply a way of fighting for the rights of
“your” group, but in doing that you're strengthening the system that weakened your group. So if you
fight only for CIS women you actually strengthen the capitalist family and kinship normative ideas,
which in turn will come back to haunt you. So it is in your interest as a CIS gender person to fight for
trans rights. You're not doing it out of “moral goodness,” you have to do it because your interest is tied
with that, because it weakens the system as a whole, and hence it improves your conditions when the
system weakens. So this is why I think the question of what is a feminist issue needs to be constantly
challenged, because I believe all anticapitalist issues are actually feminist issues.
PV: Related to this, I would like to finish the interview asking your opinion about the
“Teacher´s Spring.” Three questions: Why in now? Why at public education sector? Why the
women´s leadership?
TB: I´m going to begin by the end. Seventy-seven percent of all U.S. teachers are women. So that's
just a fact. In some states, actually the percentage is over 80%. So the fact that most of the strikers would
be women is just a given. Why in now? Because in the last 40 years, neoliberalism has attacked education
and has tried in several ways to privatize education, undermine teachers in their workplace, break
teachers’ unions, and basically undermine the very work of teaching. When people become teachers it is
because they actually like teaching children. I think we need to take that seriously. It is not just a sort of
emotional investment that people have. This is actually a joy and pride people take in their labor of teach-
ing and shaping a young mind. And every single policy that has come into being for public schools, and
this is bipartisan, from George Bush to Barack Obama, has undermined the teacher's ability to do just that.
Right now, standardized test outcomes have been tied to teachers’ performance. All those are sort of little
tools that try to control the teaching process. But then outside, at a macrolevel, there are severe funding
cuts for public education as a whole, which forces schools to close down, for teachers to leave their jobs
because it's just not possible for a person to teach and maintain a family and have a life. So there has been
this severe attack on the teaching profession in the last 40 years. And it was bound to come to a head at
some point. I think Donald Trump's election sort of rooted all these issues together in a way that it hadn't
done before. I mean all these little ingredients existed, Donald Trump didn't invent those. Gender has a
very very crucial role to play here and it's not just because the vast majority of teachers are women. Gen-
der plays a role because teaching, unfortunately, is considered as women's work. I spent a lot of time in
West Virginia when the strike broke out. I was in Kentucky. The ruling class would use epithets against
the teachers, which were unbelievably sexist. In West Virginia, the teachers were called “dumb bunnies”
that they were just hopping around as dumb bunnies they didn't know what they were doing. So in
response, the teachers got pink bunny hats and went to the capital to protest. I don't know if you know
the catalyst that sparked the West Virginia strike: It was an attack on their pensions. Healthcare and bene-
fits were the most precious resources for teachers, in a world where teachers were being rapidly deskilled
and devalued. So the wage is not good enough, the working conditions are humiliating, but if you put up
with all and continue to work in the hope that once you retire there will be a little bit of a saving for
you to be comfortable in the last phase of your life, even that was being taken away from the teachers in
8 VARELA

West Virginia. And as you well know that when it comes to old age, gender plays a particular role. So it
affected women in particular ways. But the health-care issue was gendered in West Virginia in other ways
as well. They were told that they would have to meet certain standards in order to access health care. And
for this they would have to wear this bracelet on their wrist which would monitor all their biological
rhythms and biological capacities. And based on this, it would be determined how much premium you
pay for your insurance. So I as a 40-year-old woman would be monitored according to the same standards
as a 60-year-old woman would be monitored, so my activities would be judged at the same level as a
70-year-old woman with knee surgery and a 25-year-old man. So who is more active between the three of
us? The 25-year-old man, the 47-year-old woman, or the 60-year-old woman? Whoever is more active
would pay less. OK? This is the way they were tying health care and pensions to biological rhythms. So
these were kinds of the issues that triggered the strike in West Virginia. But I think the real question we
have to ask ourselves is why did it spread. Because if as the politicians said “this is a local issue,” it should
have stayed in West Virginia. But it spread because it's a systemic issue. And this has been the condition
of teachers everywhere across the board in the United States in the last 40 years. What West Virginia
showed was that we can win. And that happened against all odds. The union leadership was against the
teachers. The Republican politicians were against the teachers. The Democrats were asking the teachers to
accept less. And the teachers’ rank and file held their ground against all of these forces and won. That's
one sweet taste of victory convinced other teachers in other states that it can be done. I mean the idea that
“it can be done” has been lost from the labor movement and the horizon of imagination and consciousness
of the U.S. working class for so long. Now if you look around in the landscape, West Virginia did not just
stand for teachers' strikes, although they have now spread to the Blue states, making tremendous gains in
Los Angeles, Denver, Arizona and Kentucky. But these strikes also set off airlines workers strike, and
the U.P.S. strikes. And now we have Sarah Nelson, the head of the Flight Attendants' union, calling for a
general strike! America has never had a general strike. So, suddenly, there is a feeling in the air that it can
happen. And as Marxists it is our job to work towards it, in workplaces, homes, communities and the
street.

ORC ID
Paula Varela https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1616-6633

AU THOR BIOGR AP HY

PAULA VARELA is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and
Adjunct Researcher at the Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Laborales of the Consejo Nacio-
nal de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CEIL-CONICET). She received her Ph.D. from the
Universidad de Buenos Aires and subsequently studied at the universities of Campinas (Brasil),
and Indiana (US). She is the author of the book “La disputa por la dignidad obrera. Sindicalismo”
(The Dispute for Workers' Dignity) among many articles on the working class, union organization
and Marxist theory.

How to cite this article: Varela P. Gender and class: An interview with Tithi Bhattacharya.
Labor and Society. 2019;1–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/lands.12399