This article argues that outwork and the high incidence of small units of production in Italy must be contextualised within the process of decentralised production. In Naples men and women play different parts within this process, understood only by reference to the sexual division of labour in the household and gender role definitions. Thus gender determines differential access to crucial resources such as capital, labour and personal networks, which are central to the individual's prospects as worker, employer or producer. While men may manipulate these networks to establish themselves as petty entrepreneurs, women are constrained by them and remain dependent within the factory or outside it.