Exploited or Entrepreneurs?: a Study of Home-based Working Women in Australia's Clothing Industry

Home-based workers are an ever increasing proportion of the Australian clothing industry's workforce. With decreasing tariff protections and increasing cheap imports of apparel into Australia, home-based workers offer both competitive labour costs, but most importantly, quick turnaround times. The media and many academic studies, focus on this supply-side story of how home-based workers underpin a fundamentally transforming industry. This book turns our attention to the lives of the (mostly) migrant women who perform this work. Focusing on a newly collectivising group of women entrepreneurs and employees who do industrial sewing in their homes, this study documents a progressive policy shift that occurred in Sydney, Australia. The work grapples with the complexities of mounting a case for state endorsed minimum wage and condition protections without an over-reliance on victimhood storylines. This analysis sheds light on a usually invisible subject, the home-based worker, and should be of interest to those organising in the industry, feminist scholars, and industry policy analysts.