Liesl Orr, James Heintz, Fiona Tregenna National Labour and Economic Development Institute A Gendered Critique of GEAR ( Growth, Employment and Redistribution) 5 Nearly two years since the implementation of GEAR, the government is far from meeting the targets it has set itself, and poverty, inequality and unemployment are worsening. The GEAR framework is not only class-biased(in favour of capital's interests) but is also gender-blind. Most economic policies are gender-biased and are often blind to the roles that women perform in the economy. The concept of GDP(gross do­mestic product) reflects this bias: unpaid labour is excluded from the figures, and the role of the informal sector cannot be accurately captured. GEAR relies heavily on GDP as an indicator of economic growth- this has serious implications for women since the valuable roles they perform in the economy are made invisible. This article will highlight the roles that women play in the economy in terms of reproductive labour and in the formal and informal sectors. In order to understand the relationship between gender and the economy we need to understand where women are located in the economy and how their experiences differ from those of men, which leads to economic policies having a dif­ferent impact on women. Reproductive Labour Women(particularly black women) perform the vast majority of reproductive labour in South 5 This article is a summary of a NALEDI Discussion Docu­ment of the same title. This article will focus on key issues regarding the gender-blindness of GEAR, while the discus­sion document goes into more details on developing a gen­der critique and alternative approaches. Africa. Examples of reproductive labour include childcare, household production and mainte­nance, informal education, home health care and looking after the sick and elderly. Reproductive labour tends to be unpaid, invisible, and unre­warded, yet the economy and our society rely heavily on this work being undertaken. Important economic outcomes arise from the fact that women are largely responsible for per­forming unpaid, reproductive labour. Because the work is unpaid, women are dependent on another source of income in order to live. Often this is a man who works in the formal economy for a wage, although old age pensions and child maintenance grants can supplement other in­come flows. This dependence on transfers of income from other sources places women at high risk. If these transfers are interrupted, many women would face an economic disaster. The threat of poverty can keep women in highly abusive and dangerous relationships in order to sustain an income source. With the dramati­cally high level of domestic violence in South Africa, these economic realities are of critical concern. GEAR is premised on an underlying logic of rolling back the state through cutting back the public sector and privatisation. The result of this is that services are available for those that can afford to pay for them and the poor are not subsidised through the state. Far from unpaid reproductive labour being incidental, the"suc­cess" of GEAR depends on an increase in unpaid labour, thus transferring additional social costs and responsibilities from the state to women. 12