 Toward a comparative historical sociology of sexing 
A comparative historical sociology of the industrialization processes in Shanghai and Calcutta between 1880 and 1939 shows that the causal primacy given to capitalism by the social reproduction theory to explain women’s subordination is empirically unfounded. While industrialization in Shanghai relied heavily on a female labor force subjected to a gendered familial control that was reinstated by their capitalist employers, in Calcutta, on the contrary, the industrialization process was characterized by a very low rate of female participation in wage labor. Not only can the genesis of these gender relations be placed before capitalism, but their variation leads to strongly differentiated occupational structures and sexual division of labor, suggesting that capitalist development is shaped by historical paths created by gender relations. Since the the use of female labor by capitalism independently varies in function of the specific form taken by gender relations, we conclude that the assumption that capitalism has internalized gender relations must be rejected in favor of an approach that gives gender a real causal autonomy.