Paper short abstract:

In India, there is a growing market of life insurance targeting women, pointing to the undervalued work of "wives and mothers." This paper examines how emergent policies life insurance for women reconceptualises the value of women's domestic and reproductive labour in an era of financialization.

Paper long abstract:

Life insurance has long been marketed to income-earners—typically men—the loss of whose salary would affect the wellbeing of survivors. Thus, life insurance companies have long targeted policies to "responsible" husbands and fathers who seek to secure the future of their families. In India, however, there is a growing market of life insurance targeted toward women, including housewives. In their promotional material, insurance companies point to the undervalued work of "wives and mothers," as well as the responsibility for women to financially ensure the future of their children. This paper examines how life insurance for women reconceptualizes the value of women's domestic and reproductive labour in an era of financialization.

Drawing on promotional materials selling life insurance to women in India, personal finance advice columns, policy documents, as well as interviews with life insurance representatives, this paper argues that on the one hand, these policies render visible the gendered labour of domestic work. Thus, they actually recognise the hidden value of domestic work, which has long been noted by feminist scholars. At the same time, however, the policies embed forms of health insurance that focus on women's health in ways that concretise women's reproductive labour. It argues that the value of domestic and reproductive labour is rendered knowable through the capitalist and increasingly financialized logics of insurance and related actuarial techniques.