Redefining norms,exploring new avenues: Negotiations of women informal workers in Delhi

Structure and agency

Giddens (1984), in his theory of structuration, views social structures as both “enabling and constraining.” This, he argues, does not prevent the structured properties of social systems from stretching away, in time and space, beyond the control of any individual actors. The actors’ conceptualization of social systems, which they help to constitute and reconstitute in their activities, may reify those systems (Giddens, 1984: 169). Joan Scott (1988) sees human agency as,

the attempt to construct an identity, a life, a set of relationships, a society within certain limits and with language—conceptual language that at once sets boundaries and contains the possibility for negation, resistance, reinterpretation, the play of metaphoric invention and imagination. (p. 42)

Scott explains that all individuals have agency; they make decisions, negotiate identities, and relationships. Yet, their ability to do so may not be completely free but is governed or influenced by structures. Archer (2000) calls for a social realism that works to link structure and agency and argues that their respective properties and powers cannot be reduced to one another (p. 7). The course of action of women workers, who formed a part of the study, was influenced by structures that were social, cultural, economic, and political. Both the groups of women belonging to construction and garment sectors were constrained by a normative framework of structures that included social norms of responsibilities toward the family, particularly the children, gendered perceptions about physical mobility, appropriate work, interactions with “others” who were not a part of the household or family, and so on.

While women construction workers, who were low-caste Hindus, could only work along with their husband or with male chaperonage on construction sites, for Muslim women taking up work outside the home was prohibited by norms. Muslim women then had only a restricted opportunity to take up work within the confines of their homes, through female networks. Social norms governed women’s entry, remuneration, and positions in the sphere of employment, sometimes leading families, particularly husbands, to compel them to withdraw from paid work where their own and family honor could be under a perceived threat. Since construction and garment industries were largely governed by informal relations, with little or no legal safeguards for workers, the system of labor relations interacted with social norms of both communities—low-caste Hindus and Muslims—to keep women’s work invisible, devalued, and low-paid. Women home-based workers, for instance, prioritized their identities as wives and mothers, and viewed their paid work at home as enabling them to manage their family responsibilities, while they could also have some earnings.

As social relations, norms, and identities get tied together in the context of paid work, we look at women’s responses and negotiations in terms of their agency, which is constrained and enabled by structures in which it is embedded and mediates these structures (Archer, 2003). Women’s ability to exercise their agency, which could be seen in their attempts to take up new and alternative forms of employment to improve their own and their families’ economic condition, was constrained by structures of patriarchal relations. While both groups of women were constrained due to the norms of religion, gender, and social group, an important comparative difference was about the kind of agency available to these two groups of women. Women construction workers could not work independently on jobsites and Muslim women in the garment sector could not, under normal circumstances, take up work outside their homes. These structural constrains were linked to family and social honor. Yet, inability of the family patriarch to fulfill his responsibilities both compelled women and opened the ground for them to exercise their agency. The exercise of their agency and its extent was, in turn, facilitated by their ability to mobilize certain resources which the discussion goes on to elaborate. In the garment industry, as women participated in home-based work, they interacted and forged social bonds with other women, including sub-contractors and those in NGOs. Some women home-based workers, compelled by circumstances to increase their incomes in the absence of earnings of a male breadwinner, could mobilize their social networks and their skills to bring about their upward mobility. In contrast, in construction, women could work only under the chaperonage and supervision of men who were their own husbands or contractors. Their opportunity for exercising agency for upward mobility in the construction sector was thus absent. Women who wanted to have independent earnings then looked for alternative employment opportunities as domestic workers through their own female networks. The article looks at such life trajectories of women workers in the two sectors in terms of the structures that constrained their actions and the agency that was available to them. It is also important to examine if individual instances of negotiating constraints and taking up new forms of employment could be perceived as unique or isolated cases or were influential in bringing about a change in the structures.

Conceptualizing informal employment and gender relations

The meaning of informal labor, sometimes known as the “precariat” in the North has been discussed extensively by scholars. ¹ In contrast, scholars analyzing informality in the global South focus on the relationship between labor, capital, and the state and emphasize the role of regulation in this relationship (Breman and van der Linden, 2014; Portes et al. 1989). Agarwala (2017) points out that by highlighting informality as those operating outside labor regulation, these scholars exposed the structural reasons for why formal workers, employers, and the state would rely on informal work in so-called modern capitalist economies—unregulated work helps foster growth. Both women and men studied as a part of this research engaged in informal employment. Construction workers, as is the norm in the sector, were recruited by contractors and sub-contractors as the principal employers try avoiding any legal obligation toward workers. Employment and income were inconsistent for most workers: once they completed one job they needed to look for another. There was no written contract between the worker and contractor or with the employer and the duration of a work-assignment could range from a single day to several months. Similarly, the small-scale nature of production in the garment sector and absence of written contracts meant that employers in this case too, did not have legal obligations toward workers.

While both women and men experienced uncertainty of continuing employment and income, lack of control over the labor process and of regulatory protection, as will be discussed further in the article, women were disadvantaged to a greater extent than men. In construction, as other studies in India (Barnabas et al., 2009; Bowers, 2019; Dalmia, 2012; Lerche et al., 2017) also note, women labored as unskilled workers along with their husbands or other male relatives. Their earnings, in turn, were largely under the control of men, unless they switched to paid domestic work which was dominated by female networks and where earnings were usually not considered to be substantial enough to have significance for men. Whereas, male unskilled construction workers had prospects to upgrade their skills and work their way up, women lacked such prospects. Bowers (2019), in her study, noted that women construction workers living on sites in Bangalore city in India did not have any potential interactions with urban networks that may have enabled access to vital information, civic amenities, and alternative job opportunities. Despite the fact that several women construction workers knew the skills and performed the same work as male workers, they were always paid a lower wage than male workers. Even when they did manage to learn the skills of a mason, employers and contractors failed to recognize them as skilled workers (Khurana, 2014; Khurana, 2017). Other studies on construction workers in the region such as Barnabas et al. (2009) and Bowers (2019) have also noted this.

Women workers in the garment sector, as this study also found, are mostly relegated as home-based workers doing embroidery, button-stitching, spinning of threads, and weaving. Wages for women home-based workers are extremely low (All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), 2009; Lerche et al., 2017). Studies on women workers in the garment sector have pointed out, women’s paid work, particularly as home-based workers, gets subsumed or framed within the norms of domestic labor (AIDWA, 2009; Mazumdar, 2007; Mies, 2012 [1982]). As Mazumdar (2007) and Mezzadri and Srivastava (2015) also note in their studies, women who worked in garment factories were assigned low-skill tasks such as thread cutting, checking, or packing of finished products as tasks that were better remunerated remained reserved for men. Informality then, is experienced differently by men and women and was only one part of the equation for women workers.

Field research revealed different life trajectories for women workers in the garments sector, particularly for those who made attempts to have better incomes. A small proportion of women home-based workers, who had engaged in the work of hand-embroidery, could transition to work as sub-contractors and earned more than home-based workers. Others, who were compelled by circumstances to improve their incomes did not have the skills of hand-embroidery. They could be doing other work at home such as stitching or weaving. These women then took up work in garment manufacturing units to enhance their incomes. The lives of these women in the garment sector could then follow different trajectories as they mobilized different resources for their upward mobility which could include their own skills, social ties with sub-contractors, and other workers and association with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that helped them with loans and forming Self-Help Groups (SHGs).

The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), an advisory body constituted by the Government of India (GOI), distinguishes between wage workers and the self-employed and treats home-based workers as a distinct category. The NCEUS report (2007) classifies home-based workers into the following two categories: (1) independent employers or own account workers (purely self-employed) and (2) dependent sub-contract workers and uses “homeworker” to designate the second category of dependent workers only. This study identifies construction workers and the three sub-groups of women in the garment sector: home-based workers, factory workers, and spinners/weavers in handloom units as wage workers and sees only the sub-contractors as self-employed entrepreneurs. The home-based workers, even when they could decide the quantity of work they wished to take up, were increasingly dependent for their irregular paid work and incomes on the sub-contractor. The sub-contractors, in turn, were at the mercy of the suppliers’ fluctuating work-orders and piece-rates. Yet, as the article further elaborates, irrespective of the challenges the sub-contractors faced, they had greater access to resources such as loans from SHGs of NGOs, social ties with the contractor and other workers, which served to advantage them to start and expand their business. The article examines ways through which women transition to improve their incomes and social positions as sub-contractors, as workers in garment factories and as community leaders with trade union-NGOs—which could be seen as an assertion of a different class position among these groups of informal workers.

The discussion in the article tries to contribute to sociological literature on women’s employment by comparing how the nature of informal work organization in the two sectors—both characterized by precarious conditions of work and employment—interacts with patriarchal structures that had different implications for the two socio-religious groups, intensifying existing gender inequalities and further disadvantaging women. At the same time, it looks at how women in the two sectors respond to the structural constraints to their mobility and employment choices in different ways, through exercising different kinds of agency, often compelled by similar material conditions. The article elucidates women’s life stories and narratives to examine factors that led some of them to resist against gender oppression and have greater control over their employment choices and incomes. ²

Methodology

The article is based on an in-depth, ethnographic research among women workers in the garment and construction industries. Fieldwork was carried out over more than 14 months between 2010 and 2011 in 2 working-class neighborhoods in Delhi. Some of the women were approached through women workers and fieldworkers/leaders of NGOs already known to me through my prior work with SEWA, a prominent organization of informal women workers in India that undertakes various activities related to skill development, micro-finance, education, and employment for women. These women, in turn, introduced me to other women workers as well as to male workers and contractors.

The study covered 55 women construction workers and 80 women workers engaged in the garment industry. The latter category comprised 52 home-based workers (mostly engaged in embroidery, others engaged in the tasks of button-stitching or spinning threads/weaving in handloom units), 20 women engaged in small-scale garment factories, and 8 sub-contractors for embroidery work. Apart from interactions with women workers, field research also included interviews and discussions with others who formed a part of their social universe. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 5 male contractors and 12 male workers in construction and 5 male contractors/employers and 11 male workers in the garment industry. Discussions and interviews were carried out with staff and leaders of organizations active in the two neighborhoods (a total of eight interviews) and a few government representatives. In all, a total of 175 respondents were covered through interviews. The survey of women workers was followed by an in-depth study of the lives of 52 women: 20 construction workers, 20 home-based workers, 5 sub-contractors, 5 women employed in garment factories, and 2 women workers who were leaders with SEWA. Not all of the women focused upon for more intense long-term interaction, were selected at the beginning; many were chosen later as I formed closer relationships with them.

Description of the study population

Most women in the garment sector belonged to low-caste Muslim households (46 out of 52) and a majority of them were Ansari /Julaha. All construction workers and contractors also belonged to a Hindu low-caste group known as Ahirwars/Chamars in North India, a caste group traditionally engaged as peasants/agricultural laborers and some in leather-work/tanning. Women, in the Muslim Ansari community, unlike those belonging to construction worker households, are generally skilled in weaving, sewing, and tailoring, which are traditionally practiced in these households by both men and women. The rest of the garment workers, a small proportion, were Hindus, belonging to the caste called “Koli,” which also traditionally engages in the task of weaving. The Kolis, also known as “Koris” in North India, are a community of weavers and, entire households, or at least a few members of a household, were found to be engaged in the tasks of weaving or spinning of threads for handloom units that were functional in the area. All these different caste groups of Ansaris, Ahirwars/Chamars, and Kolis are officially recognized as “Scheduled Castes” for political representation and affirmative action by the Indian State.

Most women who formed a part of this study were married (see Table 1) and lived with their families. All women construction workers interviewed for the survey, except two, belonged to migrant households. The majority of them, 45 out of 55, moved to Delhi more than 15 years ago, while the rest migrated only in the last 5–15 years (see Table 2). Most women workers said that they moved out of their village along with families in search of livelihood, since opportunities in the village were limited by landlessness, insufficient landholdings, or inadequate earnings. Women workers interviewed were of different age groups, ranging from 13–70 years (see Table 3). Many women construction workers started work at the construction site roughly at the age of 20 and were not retained beyond the age of 40, with some being turned away earlier and ending up as paid domestic workers. The experiences of women regarding their transition to paid domestic work after working in construction for several years, were not only empirically important, but also addressed the conceptual concerns this research focuses on. As can be observed from Table 1, all construction workers were married. The initial survey and interactions that followed revealed that women construction workers migrated along with their families and took up paid work at construction sites soon after their migration into the city. Social networks played a significant role as most migrants initially stayed with relatives, who helped them find work at the construction site and only gradually managed to purchase or rent a space in the working-class neighborhood, known as the Jhuggi–Jhopri or JJ cluster (shack clusters on public land), mostly inhabited by migrant families from the same region.

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Table 1.

Number of years resident in Delhi for women workers.

	Garment industry	Construction industry
5–10 years	3	7
11–15 years	9	3
16–20 years	11	15
21–25 years	2	15
26–30 years	4	15
31–35 years	7	–
36–40 years	2	–
41–45 years	3
46–50 years	3	–
Born in Delhi	36	–

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Table 2.

Marital status of women workers.

	Construction worker	Home-based worker	Factory worker	Sub-contractor
Single	0	18	1	2
Married	53	27	11	4
Divorced	0	0	0	0
Separated	0	2	1	0
Widowed	1	5	7	2

Source: Fieldwork data.

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Table 3.

Age-composition of different categories of women workers.

	Construction	Home-based	Handloom factory	Other factories	Sub-contractors
10–19 years	–	13	–	–	1
20–29 years	12	16	1	–	1
30–39 years	20	12	4	2	3
40–49 years	20	7	–	1	1
50–59 years	1	1	2	–	2
60< years	2	3	10	–	–

Source: Fieldwork data.

Socio-cultural norms of women’s seclusion implied that it was men who went out, spoke to their relatives and co-villagers who migrated for work opportunities in the city. The way work is structured in the construction industry usually demands the engagement of a helper along with a skilled-worker (mistri), who is invariably a man. Male construction workers then prefer to engage their own wife as their helper, who can work under the “protective eyes” of their husband. This arrangement helps maintain both the social honor of women and their husbands and also ensures that the additional income of the helper flows to their own household unit. In contrast, 36 women engaged in the garment sector were born in Delhi and 44 were migrants. The latter migrated from various districts in Western and Central Uttar Pradesh and lived in a resettlement area in Delhi. ³ Questions about migration revealed that even for those women who said they were born in Delhi, their parents migrated earlier to Delhi, mostly from rural or semi-urban areas of neighboring Uttar Pradesh. The advantage of more diverse income earning opportunities primarily drove their migration. In some cases, the male head of the household migrated first and brought in the rest of the family—the wife and children—later. The fact of migration driven by perceptions of better prospects for income earning opportunities, often prompted by accounts and experiences of relatives and co-villagers who migrated earlier, were common to households in both the construction and garment sectors.

A total of 78 out of 135 women workers were associated with NGOs /trade union-NGOs (see Table 4). The last term is used for SEWA, present in both the neighborhoods of construction and garment workers, SEWA adopted the organizational structure of a trade union and projected itself as one, but also undertook developmental activities in health, sanitation, education, vocational training and microfinance, activities typically undertaken by NGOs. A majority of women construction workers interviewed for this study were members of SEWA that helped them in getting social security benefits (like old age pension, scholarships for their children) from the Construction Workers’ Welfare Board managed by the Delhi government. Apart from this, women linked to SEWA took up its various schemes of savings, credit, and pensions, and many enrolled their children into its education and vocational training activities. Although it did mobilize workers to claim their entitlements from the welfare board, it did not address the issues of minimum wages and equal pay for women and men. In the neighborhood of garment workers, SEWA served to directly link women home-based workers with export houses and garment retailers and professed to negotiate “fair wage-rates” with the latter. Many women home-based workers linked to SEWA were of the opinion that the piece-rates offered were relatively higher than those of the contractor. At the same time, the general perception of women workers was also that the SEWA center expected better quality in the embroidery work distributed to home-based workers, and that the collection as well as the payment systems were much more formalized as compared to sub-contractors, who were often inconsistent in making payments of wages, but were willing to deliver and collect garment pieces from the homes of women workers. Many women workers and sub-contractors in the garment sector were also members of NGOs such as Chetanalaya, Parivartan, and Action-India, and often recruited women in their neighborhood to these organizations. These organizations worked in the areas of education, livelihoods, undertook other social welfare activities, and reached out to workers mostly through door-to-door membership drives and also through their presence in the neighborhood in the form of local centers, often operated by leaders who were residents from the locality.

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Table 4.

Membership of trade union/NGO.

	Construction worker	Home-based worker	Factory worker	Sub-contractor
Member	44	28	3	3
Non-member	11	24	17	5
Total	55	52	20	8

Dynamics of structure and agency: purdah and its implications for women’s paid employment

In the South Asian context, like in many other cultures, norms of women’s seclusion and protection and of care and domestic responsibilities inform their choices of paid employment and provide the language to justify them. While men too are circumscribed in their actions by economic limitations and hierarchical rules of deference in kinship and caste groups, there are additional constraints for women. An important implication of these norms, broadly termed as purdah, is that outside the home, the economic role of women, as Jeffery (1979) describes it, is “sharply curtailed” or is dependent on and subservient to men. Research among women workers engaged in the garment and construction industries in Delhi for this study revealed that both the groups adhered to different sets of ideologies of seclusion and protection of women, which had different implications for their choices of paid employment and their ability to bring about changes in their economic condition. The extent of women’s participation in paid work also depended upon, as Brown (1970) notes, “the compatibility of the latter with simultaneous childcare responsibilities” (p. 1074). So we begin by examining how the structures of this normative framework defined and constrained women’s choices of paid employment and the different implications it had for the two groups of women. Women’s agency in trying to negotiate with norms to bring about changes in their material conditions is discussed in the sub-section that follows.

Most women construction workers, who were low-caste Hindus (Ahirwars), were married and generally covered their heads with the end of their saris (ghunghat) in the presence of male affines and when they went out for work or other activities. It was generally the men who used their social networks to fix work-assignments for themselves and their wives. The contractors pointed out that women never came to ask for work on their own; their husbands accompanied them. One of the contractors was of the opinion that “women from the dehat (rural areas) are different from urban, higher class women. They are afraid of their parents and their husbands.” Many contractors and men and women workers pointed out that construction sites could be unsafe for women and cited instances of sexual assault on women or men making “inappropriate gestures.” These general rules of modesty not only constrained women from seeking and opting for employment on their own; at times, they even led them to withdraw from paid work. This is what happened with Shivkali (mentioned at the start): her husband made her withdraw from work at the construction site when he noticed other men flirting with her. Vatuk (1982) stated in the context of South Asian societies, the sheltering of a woman from the threat of sexual advances of non-family males is felt to be necessary not only for her own sake but also for the maintenance of the social honor of the patriarchal group to which she belongs. For Shivkali too, such structural constraints led her to discontinue going for paid work at the construction site, which could pose a potential threat to personal and family honor.

Ideas and values of women’s gender roles and responsibilities toward their children and the household also greatly influenced their choices since men did not take responsibility for these tasks. Women were constantly concerned about their children’s safety and wanted to avoid accidents for which they, as mothers, would be held responsible. So several women construction workers had to give up paid work or switch to alternative forms of employment as paid domestic workers that allowed them more time to look after their children. This is what happened with Phula when her little daughter once got lost while she and her husband were working at the construction site. Upon finding the child after a long and difficult hunt, Phula’s husband admonished her and asked her not to work at the construction site anymore. Women were also compelled to forego paid work due to the lack of childcare facilities provided by the state or the employers. NGOs and trade unions are largely denied access to construction sites and organizations like Mobile Creches, specifically engaged in providing childcare facilities on construction sites, could do so on very limited worksites (Mobile Creches, 2008). As a result, my observations of construction sites I visited as well as women workers’ interviews and narratives revealed, childcare support for migrant women construction workers was virtually absent. Employers and contractors avoided recruiting too many women workers since the employment of more than 50 women made them liable to provide childcare facilities at the work site as well as paid maternity leave to women workers. ⁴

Garment factories were mostly small units that also lacked childcare arrangements and were often far from women’s homes. All married home-based women workers who were surveyed, except one, had children. Only one married woman who was separated from her husband was without children. In total, 12 women out of 52 had at least 1 child of 5 years or less. For Muslim women who formed a part of the study, the hegemonic ideology which stressed that they should not work outside their homes unless compelled to do so, combined with the factors of their domestic and care responsibilities, meant that they avoided taking up employment outside their homes as long as they could. ⁵ Even though as Ansaris, or low-caste Muslims, these families were not always bound by high-caste norms that traditionally implied stricter purdah restrictions, stepping out for paid work was rare for women and occurred only in situations of dire economic necessities that indicated patriarchal failure and absence or unwillingness of relatives to offer support. This was unlike the case of low-caste Hindu women, who as discussed earlier, were permitted to take up paid work alongside their husbands. Idrisha, a 40-year-old Muslim home-based woman worker, for instance, took up embroidery some years ago, after her husband passed away. Idrisha pointed out that she could not take up any other job due to a lack of education and formal training. “Home-based embroidery work, then gave me a chance to have some earnings and at the same time take care of children and other housework.”

It was not just the normative framework of women’s protection and responsibilities of childcare and domestic work, but also the way work and production processes were organized, as well as ideas of their skill and abilities, that governed their choices of paid work. While 47 percent of women workers engaged in the garment sector were illiterate, 15 percent were educated up to the fifth grade. Just 3 out of the total 80 women workers engaged in the garment sector studied until the 12th grade. ⁶ Unlike women belonging to construction worker households, most of these women from the Ansari/Julaha or Koli communities were skilled in the tasks of weaving, spinning threads, embroidery, sewing, cutting, and tailoring—skills that they learnt at home from mothers, sisters, or neighbors. In spite of possessing these skills, they were rarely offered jobs in the factory since the positions of master-cutters and tailors in garment factories were invariably given to male skilled workers. At the same time, the garment industry took advantage of the vast pool of home-based women workers by offering them work on piece-rates that were much lower than the wage given to male workers who worked in the factories. The few tasks, which could be carried out by women in the factories involved a lower level of skill (such as cutting of extra threads from stitched garments, packing finished pieces, etc.) and were remunerated on wage-rates (often on a piece-rate basis) that were often as low as the rates given for home-based work. In such a situation, women preferred the latter form of employment. Since such employment was home-based and remunerated on piece-rates, the gendered nature of work meant that wages were low and average daily earnings of home-based workers were lower than women in construction even when the latter’s tasks were regarded as unskilled. The knowledge of traditional skills then did not advantage Muslim women vis-à-vis Hindu women in the construction industry, it only helped them to have some earnings through work that could be carried out at home, while taking care of domestic responsibilities. All women construction workers described themselves as “beldaars” and did not see any scope for transitioning to better paid jobs as a mason as the latter position remained reserved for men. Women’s home-based work, work as paid domestic workers, or as their husband’s helpers at the construction site, helped in maintaining the public and self-perception of men as breadwinners.

From the point of view of contractors and employers, there was no incentive to incorporate women into factory employment since their employment as home-based workers in the garment industry and as unskilled workers/helpers at the construction site helped in subsidizing the wage of men. As illustrated earlier, social norms governed women’s entry, remuneration, and positions in the sphere of employment, and were essential to reinforcing both capitalist and patriarchal relations. Since construction and garment industries were largely governed by informal relations, with little or no legal safeguards for workers, the system of labor relations interacted with social norms of both communities—low-caste Hindus and Muslims—to keep women’s work invisible, devalued, and low-paid. Yet, for both groups of women—engaged in construction and the garment industry—certain situations enabled women to exercise greater agency, leading to a change in choices of paid employment, as is further examined below.

Shifts to independent forms of work

The life stories of some women workers engaged both in construction and the garment sector revealed that they switched to other more independent forms of employment, where they networked on their own for employment or work-assignments and had control over their own earnings, which sometimes also brought them better incomes. What were the circumstances that led to such shifts and what were the resources that enabled these shifts? Among construction workers, Shivakali’s case was exceptional as she went on to transition as a leader in SEWA and significantly improved her own and her family’s economic and social standing. The sub-section on construction workers looks at the situations in which some construction workers worked independently, without their husbands on construction sites and several of them shifted to, or alternated between, paid domestic work and construction work. The analysis discusses the economic as well as the socio-cultural factors that enabled these women construction workers to mediate structural constraints to take up more independent forms of employment. The sub-section that follows, discusses cases of women home-based embroidery workers in the garment sector, who transitioned to work as sub-contractors, and some others engaged in tasks such as stitching, spinning, and so on, who took up factory employment or other forms of paid work outside their homes. Sub-contractors, in particular, were able to significantly improve their incomes and standards of living and the analysis examines the resources that enabled these women to exercise their agency to bring about their upward mobility.

Responses of neighbors, caste fellows and fellow-workers and women’s negotiations

Women who defied the norm of male protection and independently negotiated with male contractors and employers often faced the disapproval and suspicion of neighbors, relatives, or caste fellows. Shakuntala (mentioned earlier) was spoken of by her neighbor as someone who offered sexual favors to her construction-contractor in order to ensure optimum wages and consistent employment. Muslim women in the garment sector, who took up paid employment in the factories and as sub-contractors, were often seen as provoking sexual encounters as they moved to and from their workplace and to far-off places, generally without chaperonage. Hakila was spoken of by other women home-based workers and sub-contractors as having bestowed sexual favors on the contractor in order to ensure consistent work-orders as well as perks and presents for herself. Women in their anger and jealousy described her as a “prostitute” and attributed her success in work to her sexual misconduct. Varisa, another Muslim woman, whose husband lived in another city with his parents where he was undergoing medical treatment for his illness felt that fingers were raised at her as she left her home to work in the factory. “There are people who comment that I do not have my husband around and yet, I go out so well-dressed!” Varisa resented, but ignored such comments, asserting that “I have to look presentable as I step out of home and then, I cannot stop working for a livelihood due to what people say.”

Although an adherence to the norms of seclusion and the actions or opinions of others remained important for women, in their own reasoning, they balanced the criticisms of others with their need for an income. They acquired greater confidence to counter such criticism as they took on the responsibility to earn for their households as the primary breadwinners. Women construction workers mediated such condemnation—the constraints they experienced from diffused norms and specific agents—by attempting to work with contractors they were familiar with and shared ties of caste, kinship, or locality. It was thought that this would minimize chances of sexual harassment as well as salacious rumors. Yet, as seen in the case of Shakuntala, who generally worked with a contractor who was familiar and from the same caste, this did not always happen.

Most Muslim women home-based workers and sub-contractors, including the girls, covered their entire bodies with a burqa (veil) whenever they stepped out of their homes. Vatuk (1982: 69) points out that the burqa gives the parda-nashin ⁷ a degree of mobility within the public arena, which she did not have previously. Papanek (1982) also makes a similar point when she indicates that the burqa is a logical supplement to the use of enclosed living spaces and enables women to move out of these spaces in a kind of “portable seclusion” (p. 10). In principle, the use of the veil symbolized adherence to structures, to the norms of seclusion. At the same time, in using the veil to increase their mobility and complete tasks related to their paid work, women also reinterpreted and gave new meanings to norms of seclusion and asserted their identities as workers and earners.

Although many young women contributed to household earnings through home-based paid work, they had sisters engaged in other employment, mostly with various NGOs active in the neighborhood. Some of these young women, like their mothers and sisters, used the veil to gain social acceptance for their increased mobility and engagement in newer forms of employment. However, many of them seemed to have given up the burqa or used it only occasionally, pointing out that it was not practical to veil themselves all the time as they moved around to far-off places for their jobs or academic/professional courses and interacted with strangers on extensive field-visits. However, as one of these girls named Ruksaar stated, “even when we do not use the burqa when we step out, we are always careful in our conduct and would not do anything to bring shame to our families.” The modesty and commitment to uphold the honor of their families was thus, not tied to their use of the burqa, but was embodied in their behavior. Young, unmarried women faced greater restrictions to their mobility as perceived risks to their virtue and honor were greater. Vatuk (1982: 69) noted decades ago, that the gradual abandonment of the veil for young women in many sectors of the Muslim community—and the increasing tendency to dispense with it when among total strangers even by those who wear it near home—are parts of the process of coming out of seclusion for modern Muslim women. The shifts in social norms indicate how economic necessities and practical needs to move in public spaces and interact with various people led to changes in practices and how, in the process, these younger women could also improve their life chances. The significance of the negotiations of these young women and girls with family members lay not only in supporting the households through their earnings, but also in being able to exercise their agency to fulfilling their own undeclared ambitions of “taking up a job,” like many youngsters of their age. This entailed acknowledgment of certain conventions, as well as opportunities for expressing individuality. Though the patriarchal concerns for girls’ safety were greater, simultaneously, younger women were often more independent, and thus, ended up exercising more agency. Even as parents in such households allowed their daughters to work for reasons of economic necessity, such shifts were also a part of acceptance of the larger observed changes taking place around them. It was more acceptable for a daughter in a Muslim household to take up work outside the home and make limited use of the veil since such practices were “now commonplace.” Many girls in the community and in the neighborhood—Muslims and others—were doing it with the support of their families. In this mediation between structure and agency, one could see a change not only in practice but also in ideology or in the discourse on feminine domesticity and “appropriate behavior.”

Conclusion

Even as women’s WPRs have been low in India, what is also evident is their increasing concentration in informal employment, with a greater share of women’s total employment than men’s concentrated there. As is evident from this study and the research of several other scholars, structural constraints of patriarchal and capitalist relations largely keep women outside formal employment, in more invisible forms of work, denying them optimum wages, employment, and social security benefits and more importantly, identities as “workers.” The organization of production and labor relations, in turn, tend to reproduce and deepen existing structural inequalities and vulnerabilities.

The study presented in this article provides insights into the strategies that some women workers belonging to two different socio-cultural groups adopt to contest precarious working conditions and patriarchal norms that were common to the experience of both these groups of women. While both groups of women were constrained due to the norms of religion, gender, and social group, an important comparative difference was about the kind of agency available to these two groups of women. In the construction industry, the way religious and gender constraints intersect, and the way work is organized, created an opportunity for women to enter work on jobsites with male chaperonage. In contrast, for Muslim women in the garment industry, norms of gender and religion prohibited them from taking up work outside the home and created a restricted opportunity for paid work within the confines of their homes. In the garment industry, as women participated in home-based work, they developed networks with other women, including sub-contractors and those in NGOs. Some women home-based workers, compelled by circumstances to increase their incomes in the absence of earnings of a male breadwinner, could mobilize their social networks and their skills to bring about their upward mobility. In contrast, in construction, women reported to their husbands or the contractors, who were men, so, their opportunity for exercising agency for upward mobility in the construction sector was absent. Women who wanted to have independent earnings then looked for alternative employment opportunities as domestic workers through their own female networks.

Women from both the socio-cultural groups accepted structural constraints and acknowledged the importance of male protection and provision in a situation of low wages and precarious jobs. Aspects of respect and intimacy in the conjugal relationship were important to women. The structures that constrained women’s choices and actions also enabled them in some ways, as Giddens (1984) has argued, to mediate constraints. It was when men failed to fulfill their responsibilities to protect and provide for the family and acted in ways that were considered socially unacceptable that women, from both the groups, had to mobilize their resources to improve their own and their family’s material conditions. Their social network of kin, neighbors and fellow workers, association with socio-political organizations, and their own skills were resources that they could draw on and those who were able to do so were differently positioned as compared to other women. These resources helped women acquire greater material, social, and cultural capital and led to a change in how they viewed their own power and agency (Archer, 2003). The study then extends the discussion on the relationship between women’s paid work and their ability to negotiate their relations in the domestic and public spheres by drawing attention to factors apart from paid work that enable women to mediate structural constraints. Their engagement in independent forms of employment and in NGO activities brought greater awareness and self-determination among women and girls and had implications for their ability to negotiate in their relations with others in the domestic and public spheres.

The disapproval that they might face from their family members, relatives, or neighbors, at times, acted to obstruct their attempts. However, women, in several cases, were seen to negotiate these constraints and justify their actions with their need to earn for their households and a better life for their children. The condition for women to be able to take action to fight the harsh realities of their irregular and insecure employment was decidedly material. Yet, this was only the necessary condition for women to be able to transition to employment where they were more independent of male control. The urgency of their need to do so differed. Even as women largely adhered to norms and affirmed their commitment to do so, in certain instances, they also took strong stances, arguing that that their modesty and commitment to uphold the honor of their families was not linked to their choice of paid employment and mobility, but was essentially embodied in their behavior. For younger Muslim women, though their family’s concerns about their virtue and honor were greater, they were simultaneously often more independent, and thus, ended up exercising more agency than older, married women. This was also evident in how they perceived their paid work as not only contributing to household earnings but also as fulfilling their own undeclared ambitions of “taking up a job,” like many youth of their age. Women thus exercised their agency within the structures that constrained their actions, allowing them to maneuver in some ways to achieve their own and their family’s ends. In the process, they could sometimes widen the spaces available to them. Even as women’s actions gave new meanings and forms to norms and constraints, the structural dynamics rarely changed. While norms remained important, women gave new meanings to them through their actions.