Gendered Labour, Care Economy, and Social Reproduction: An Original Theoretical Contribution from Nigeria’s South East

Care economy research has generated significant theoretical advances in feminist sociology globally, yet its application to African contexts where care work intersects with extended family obligation, informal market production, and patriarchal institutional structures requires original theoretical development. This doctoral study makes an original theoretical contribution to care economy and social reproduction sociology grounded in five years of multi-method research in Igbo communities of Anambra, Imo, and Enugu States. Fieldwork combined ethnographic observation in twelve households over six-month rotations, seventy-two in-depth interviews with women across occupational categories and life stages, institutional analysis of care-related organisations from churches to market women's associations, and time-use diary data from 180 women. The original theoretical framework, titled Relational Care Assemblage, proposes that care work in the South East Nigerian context cannot be captured by individual-level gendered burden frameworks but must be understood as a collectively organised relational assemblage distributed across extended kinship networks, market substitution relationships, and spiritual-community institutions. The model identifies three original mechanisms through which care assemblages simultaneously challenge and reproduce gender inequality: strategic care delegation enabling women's market participation while preserving patriarchal household authority; care economy market creation through commodified domestic services that generate female income while intensifying lower-income women's unpaid burden; and sacred care obligations through ancestral veneration practices that feminise spiritual maintenance work without economic recognition. The doctoral contribution advances care economy theory through an original framework irreducible to Western feminist care theory formulations. Keywords: care economy, social reproduction, gender, Igbo communities, feminist sociology.