Patriarchal capitalism and women's labor in East Java and Pattani: A subnational comparison of social reproduction and differentiated precarity

This article investigates the influence of patriarchal capitalism on women's labor in East Java, Indonesia, and Pattani, Thailand. It challenges the assumption that increased female participation in paid employment necessarily leads to emancipation, autonomy, or protection. Rather, the analysis explores how women are integrated into labor markets while continuing to bear unpaid reproductive responsibilities, household vulnerability, and limited recognition. Employing a qualitative most-different subnational comparative design, the study draws on 13 semi-structured interviews conducted between August 2024 and July 2025 with formal-sector workers, informal or weakly protected workers, and institutional, union, political, or policy actors, alongside official labor and social data. The findings indicate that women's entry into paid work is primarily driven by household necessity, unstable income, irregular male earnings, childcare, eldercare, and daily survival needs. While formal employment offers wages, contracts, and social protection, it may also reinforce patriarchal domination through workplace hierarchy, discipline, restricted autonomy, and the continued displacement of care responsibilities. Although informal work appears flexible, it shifts risks related to illness, income interruption, weak protection, safety, and childcare onto women and their households. The article introduces the concept of gendered incorporation to explain how women become economically indispensable while remaining underprotected and politically misrecognized. This research contributes to comparative politics by demonstrating how patriarchal capitalism manifests through distinct subnational labor regimes: informalization and misrecognition in East Java and feminized sectoral concentration, workplace regulation, and care burdens in Pattani.