MICROENTREPRENEURS AND HOMEWORKERS - CONVERGENT CATEGORIES

Home-based workers are not easily identified as either self-employed o r dependent workers because these categories of employment status fail to capture gender subordination which is particularly salient in the case of home-based work. Yet development practitioners tend to treat h ome-based workers as self-employed microentrepreneurs, providing them credit and training. Unions, on the other hand, consider them exploite d workers, push for the enforcement of labour laws and sometimes have begun to organize homeworkers and bargain collectively on their behalf . We present the cases of the Self-Employed Women's Association of Ind ia and the West Yorkshire Homeworking Group of Great Britain as exampl es of successful organizations which support home-based workers by com bining microenterprise development and union organizing. (C) 1997 Else vier Science Ltd.