Handmade Housewives : Between Production Labor and Reproduction Labor

The aim of this presentation is to clarify and better understand the relation between production labor and reproduction labor. I focus on Japanese housewives who make handmade goods and sell these. Since enforcing Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society at 1999, the Japanese Government switched a "kind treatment" policy to the housewife and has aimed at making women work force. But it is difficult to continue working due to not only the heavy burden of parenting but also the unsupport system of raising children. Therefore women cannot help being a housewife through a birth. In other words women hold dilemma between the difficulty to participate in production labor by child care and the pressure which they should do production labor. In such a dilemma, what kind of compromise do housewives have?
To clarify the question, I paid attention to "Sakka-san" and their group who are not only housewives but also making and selling handmade goods which are fabric accessories, leather crafts, woodworks, knits, etc. I investigated the reason of the act why they produce and sell goods through the field work to them. As it turned out, It might be the act from the gender division of labor at first, but they transcended that unawares and present the new way of labor to us.