REREADING UNDECLARED WORK A gendered analysis

The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether undeclared work is the same when conducted by men and women. Conventionally, the view is that such work is always profit-motivated market-like work and that women's undeclared work mirrors their subjugated position in the formal labour market in terms of pay, contract type and sector. Reporting evidence gathered during 861 face-to-face interviews in contemporary England, this paper finds that to represent undeclared work as a profit-motivated market-like endeavour is to read such work through the lens of men's accounts of such work. For women, although some undeclared work is of this variety, the vast majority is conducted for friends, neighbours and kin for reasons associated with redistribution and social capital building and thus more akin to unpaid mutual aid than employment. To unshackle narratives of undeclared work from current market-centred readings, therefore, this paper differentiates between profit-motivated market-like informal employment and undeclared work carried out in a moral economy of paid favours so as to unravel the nature of men's and women's participation in this sphere and explore the implications for understanding women's community engagement.