The other refuted the idea of a subsidy, instead treating domestic work as essential to the reproduction of the labour force in societies of this type. Empirically, this means, for example, that if young men and women start by being equally productive in both spheres of production, gender discrimination in the labour market (which reduces women’s wages below their market productivity) will mean that women take on a larger share of domestic work and men a larger share of remunerated work in the market (Gardiner, 1997). Thus, surplus value is appropriated by the capitalists, who pay male workers a wage that is less than the value of their labour. The mechanism for this is the retention within the home of those aspects of reproduction and maintenance of the labour force that are not profitable either for capitalist production or for the State, in the event that the latter were to take on responsibilities in this area.