Feminist political economy suggests that material and cultural discrimination against girls and women are the primary factors that influence their social conditions^[1] and health.  The health problems women face emerge from the discrimination and disadvantage that they experience as they carry out the gendered activities making up their daily lives^[1][2][3].  Materialism examines the economic needs of the family, the work of women in the home and in labor markets, and the needs of employers. “Materialists contend that both bodies and ideas must be understood within the context of material conditions”^[1][4]. Materialism accepts that biological factors affect and are affected by material conditions and vice versa^[3].  Materialists argue that there is usually one group or class that produces while another class controls; and while people produce and reproduce, they require food, clothing, and shelter.  Historically, these class relationships have been explained through property ownership (e.g. feudalism, slavery).  Today, class relationships are explained with laborers, who exchange their labor for wages, and an elite class that controls and influences waged work.  Materialists do not assume social harmony, and people do not do necessarily do as they please^[1].

Feminist political economy suggests that women are directly affected when women’s wages are lower than men, and that women tend to be confined to households because their work is not exchangeable for wages in the market^[6].  Women who do participate in labour markets often do so as a reserve supply of labour on either daily, weekly, seasonally, or part time basis to respond to demand.  The dual demands of their work in the home and the labour market have a direct effect on the way women participate in the workforce as well as on the sex segregation of women’s work and women’s wages^[1].  For example, if a job is defined to have social care, the likely it is that the work will be done by a woman, defined as unskilled, and; therefore, is low-paid.  This results in gender inequalities in income and wealth, which make women vulnerable to poverty^[1] and health inequities. 

The invisibility of women’s work is because of an assumption that women are responsible for social reproduction, which overlaps both the public and private realms^[5].  There is a perception that good women care for their families and others, either uncompensated or low-paid, to attain feminine moral worth^[9][7].  As a result, while the work in the home is considered to be free from constant supervision, it is detrimental to women’s material conditions and perpetuates health inequity because it is unpaid or underpaid, unregulated, invisible, undervalued; and characterized by long hours, dull, repetitive, and isolated work^[1].  Material conditions such as employment opportunities, wages, and scarcity of day-care will still constrain women’s roles and confine them to work primarily in the home, even if ideas of women’s place in the home changes^[1] [4].