Gendered Distributive Injustice in Production Networks: Implications for the Regulation of Precarious Work.

This article examines the regulation of precarious homework in Thailand’s gendered global production networks (GPNs), focusing on women homeworkers in the fishing net industry around Khon Kaen. Using a feminist GPN analytical framework, it highlights how vertical value chain pressures and local gender norms intersect to produce distributional injustices, including low wages, precarious work conditions, and limited bargaining power for predominantly female homeworkers. The paper critically assesses Thailand’s Home Worker Protection Act 2010 (HWPA) and related social insurance schemes, finding that while the HWPA marks a legislative milestone by formally recognizing homeworkers, it remains poorly enforced and insufficiently addresses the complex power relations and risks embedded in production networks. The authors argue that effective labour regulation must enable homeworkers to make distributional claims across multiple levels of the value chain and confront gendered social undervaluation of home-based work, suggesting that Thailand’s approach could be strengthened by incorporating broader liability, collective bargaining rights, and more comprehensive social protections.