1 SOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND THE DIVISION OF LABOUR Ly Hoang Minh Uyen Thai Nguyen University, Vietnam Email: sallymju@gmail.com Abstract This paper examines issues related to the analysis of social and gender relationships that surround the reproduction of the workforce and the division of labor. It questions whether reproduction of labor capacity is considered as a job and creates surplus-value, and how capitalist society has separated the labor. Using the documentary analysis method from major research works of scholars such as Marx, Heather A. Brown, Barbagallo, Dunayevskaya, Federici, and Fortunati, these writings make it clear historically that much of this social reproduction and the work necessary to produce and reproduce workers, without the support of others, is mostly done by mothers, teaching their children the ways and conventions of social life. Of course, without being born, brought up, sustained, trained, and educated to certain levels, workers cannot work. Thus, we must examine women's contribution to the reproduction of class society in its entirety. Although the natural division of labor in birth according to biology is not necessarily an opposition, the division of labor according to the sex characteristics of class society is certainly so. The studies mentioned above were innovative because they refuted the stereotype that women's role in reproduction was unimportant and clarified their position in terms of social structure and development of society. Keywords: Reproduction, division of labour, women, gender relations, Marxism, documentary analysis. Introduction Federici has always argued, and published in her work Wages for Housework (1974), that housework is an unpaid job. She helped found the organization Wages for Housework in the early 1970s (Federici 1974: 3). In that movement, her organization protested to demand payment for reproduction works, including housework, family care, and child care, or domestic works in general. However, there are places where there has not yet been discussion of the concept of social reproduction and the gendered division of labor. Without debate about their role, Federici believes that women remain unaware of their importance in the reproduction of labor power and how reproduction is the nature of women is used by capitalists to impose an unpaid reproductive role in society (Federici 1974: 4).