Scholars interested in the role of women in relation to development have shown the extent to which women contribute in a variety of paid and unpaid ways to social development of nations. This scholarship also enlightens scholars and other professionals as to how such contributions are related to conceptions of gender and contribute to gender construction. It includes income earning activities that are often invisible, uncounted, and undocumented because they take place in the informal economy and often in or from the jobs from home. These activities include producing items as well as selling goods and foodstuffs on the street. Although much of this is jobs from home for pay or profit, it is often not recognized in a formal way as contributing to gross domestic production or to the quality of family life. In many cases, this income adds significantly to the standard of living for the household and is produced in addition to the other jobs from home that women do.

The other jobs from home is unpaid labor for the benefit of families and communities, sometimes referred to as household production, which is devalued under capitalist industrialization. Unpaid women’s work includes child care, food growing and production, fetching of water and firewood, production of clothing for their families, and nurturing of family members. It was argued that as capitalism advances, women are included as unpaid laborers by the process of "housewifization." In addition to activities that nourish and benefit children and other family members, there might be gender differences in participation in voluntary activities that benefit schools, churches, civic organizations, and the community.

These are services that help to maintain other people and enable them to participate in education and wage earning activities and are as important to social life as any other type of labor. But in the face of the social importance of this labor, labor for pay is often considered as the only "rear" work. This is the work that is counted and statistically analyzed when the economy of a country is being considered.

Scholars have related the economic position of women to the worldwide structure of unequal labor markets. This scholarship also brings understanding of how labor, including jobs from home, can be both cause and consequence of conceptions of gender. Scholars have developed models of a household division of labor and an international division of labor with a reorganization of production that uses subcontracting to save costs and raise profits for
organizations. Some have argued that transnational organizations, in particular, have exploited jobs from home –workers.