Positioning Women Homeworkers in a Global Footwear Production Network : Identifying Barriers and Enablers to Claiming Rights

This paper theorises the position of women footwear homeworkers through the lens of global production networks. Using data collected in India during 2011 to 2014, it illustrates the asymmetry of power between network actors, and attests to the poverty, invisibility and lack of acknowledgement and representation characterising leather footwear homework. It represents leather footwear homeworkers as working from the margins of these networks, with weak links to most other actors in the networks. Drawing from the concept of social upgrading and bringing in concepts from network regulation, the paper asks questions relating to how marginalised and informal workers might increase the power and capacity of their participation in GPNs