This post won the 2022 Laadli Media & Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity.
India’s women labour force is often viewed as dispensable and faces marginalisation and exploitation. Society’s patriarchal and casteist notions are reflected in the way we treat ASHA workers, women farmers, construction labourers and women workers in India in general.
“The conception that house makers do not ‘work’ or that they do not add economic value to the household is a problematic idea that has persisted for many years and must be overcome.” Justice N V Ramana said this on 5 January, 2021 while delivering a judgment in favour of an appeal arising out of compensation claims in a motor accident.
In Kriti vs Oriental Insurance Company Ltd, heirs of a couple who lost their lives in a road accident had appealed against a judgment of the Delhi High Court that ordered a cut-down of the compensation amount because the woman who lost her life was a “housewife“.
The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, a legal forum that ensures cheaper and speedier remedies to road accident victims, had ordered the insurance company to pay a total of ₹4.7 million for the deceased couple. However, the Delhi High court, responding to an appeal by the insurance company, cut the amount down to ₹2.2 million, stating that the woman was a housewife.
The insurance company’s argument reflects how womens’ labour is viewed in India.
The contribution of women who are called housewives or homemakers is not valued. The number of such women (as per the census of 2011) is 159.85 million. Their roles and responsibilities are decided at the time of marriage. They are, by default, the caretakers of the entire family with little or no support from the husband. Besides that, they are also looked down upon in the family.
Women in India earn only 56% of what their male colleagues do. Equal pay for equal work? Not yet. https://t.co/ud7ou0zxFA #FutureOfWork pic.twitter.com/t8ZJdZGC2N
— Youth Ki Awaaz (@YouthKiAwaaz) November 5, 2016
Now, this view haunts them when they step out to earn, especially in the informal sector, which is characterised by poor working conditions, non-uniformity of wages, lack of social security and little or no protection of the law.
A 2009–10 report of the National Sample Survey Office showed that of the 465 million workers in the country, only 23 million are employed in the formal sector. The rest (437 million) are employed in the unorganised sector and women make a large part of this workforce.
Additionally, 94% of India’s women labour force is employed in the informal sector and their treatment is merely a reflection of our society’s attitude towards women, in general.
How India’s Women Farmers View Themselves
When I saw Asha Devi working in her house — cooking, cleaning, milking the cattle and then working in the paddy fields — in a village in Buxar district of Bihar, I asked her why she was working so hard. “Then what do I do, I don’t have a job like you. I am a grihastha (married) woman,” she replied.
“Aren’t you a farmer, then?” I asked her. She looked baffled. It was as if she’d never heard such a question before. But she is not alone. Every woman I spoke to didn’t see herself as a farmer. A woman could only be called a farmer’s wife but not a farmer herself. And everything they do is by virtue of her relationship with the husband and his family and, therefore, an extension of their household duties.
Data shows that more than 75% of women in rural India work full-time as farmers. They are not just unpaid or under-paid, but rarely, if ever, recognised as farmers. This makes them vulnerable, both as workers and as members of the family.
In Urban Areas, The Condition Of Domestic Workers Isn’t Very Different.
According to some reports, there are about four million domestic workers in India. However, as suggested by some other estimates, the number might be as high as 50 million. And women form a major part of this workforce.
“The foremost problem faced by women in the unorganised sector is lack of recognition,” says Aditi Yaginik, Organising Coordinator at SEWA based in India’s capital city, Delhi.
Labour falls under the concurrent list, meaning that both states and the centre can make laws on this subject. Seven out of the 29 states in India have notified minimum wages for domestic workers, but successive governments at the centre have made no attempts to recognise domestic workers and their labour.
There is no central legislation to protect the rights of domestic workers. They are not entitled to social security benefits and don’t even get holidays. One can say that they are at the mercy of their employers.
Chandan Kumar, National Coordinator, Working Peoples’ Charter and member of the National Minimum Wage Advisory Board, explained, “Minimum Wages Act of 1948 talks about scheduled employment and only those work categories that are included statutorily in this list have notified minimum wages. Domestic work has not been notified in this list of employment by most Indian states.”
Even in the states where a minimum wage is assigned for domestic work, the wage rate is indicative of the insensitivity of the people sitting in the policy chambers.
Tamil Nadu, for instance, fixed the minimum wages at the rate of ₹31 per hour (in rural areas) and ₹37 per hour (in cities) for unskilled domestic workers and ₹39 per hour for skilled domestic workers. In Bihar, the wage rate is around ₹28 per hour. Labour experts have called them outright exploitative.
Convention 189 of the International Labour Organization, also called the Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers, was adopted in 2011. It sets labour standards for domestic workers. India never ratified it.
Chandan explained why. “Domestic work in India is regulated by Resident Welfare Associations which you can call the middle-class. They remain against it,” he said.
It can be said that the attitude of the government towards women employed in the unorganised sector is similar to society’s attitude towards women.
The Exploitation Of ASHA Workers
Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHA are voluntary women health workers that operate in rural and grassroots India. They receive honorariums and incentives in exchange for their services, but not a salary.
They are an essential link between the State and society for taking health and nutritional information, collecting, maintaining household health data, recording births and deaths, ensuring immunisations of the young, keeping an eye on any outbreaks of communicable diseases and providing home-based postnatal care and family planning services.
An article published in the Economic and Political Weekly categorically points out that the commitment of ASHA’s towards the well-being of the community is unduly exploited by the State in the name of “volunteerism”.
The ASHA workers protested in large numbers in August 2020, demanding a raise in pay, better access to resources, insurance and legal recognition that would allow them access to worker benefits, and at the very least, a fixed minimum wage. Most ASHA workers come from marginalised sections of society. Their precarity arises from the inherent caste plus patriarchal set-up of Indian society.
Women In India’s Construction Sector
The construction sector is another big employer of women in India, second only after agriculture. There are about 41 million people engaged in construction work, of which about a fifth are women.
Construction work (being a male-dominated domain, perhaps!) has better protections than domestic work and agricultural labour. It is on the list of scheduled employment in nearly all Indian states.
But that’s no good unless you’re a registered construction worker as per the Building and Other Construction Workers’ Act (1996) (BOCW). Only half of India’s construction workforce is recognised, according to a report by the Ministry of Labour and Employment. A study conducted on 3,200 workers in March 2020 found that 94% of the sample space didn’t possess BOCW identity cards.
Women construction labourers are also paid less than men and get no hikes even as they gain experience.
“Whatever Little We Pay Women At Work Seems Too Much.”
Justice A K Ganguly, in 2010, had slammed the Government of India for clubbing women involved in household duties with beggars, sex workers and prisoners in the 2001 census, or those they count as economically inactive.
“This bias is shockingly prevalent in the work of the census. In the Census of 2001, it appears that those who are doing household duties like cooking, cleaning of utensils, looking after children, fetching water, collecting firewood, have been categorised as nonworkers and equated with beggars, prostitutes and prisoners who, according to the census, are not engaged in economically productive work.
“As a result of such categorisation about 36 crore (367 million) women in India have been classified in the Census of India, 2001, as non-workers and placed in the category of beggars, prostitutes and prisoners. This entire exercise of census operations is done under an Act of Parliament.”
Not much has changed in 2021. While it may take time for societies to evolve naturally, elected leaders ought to try and work towards the prevalent injustices disruptively.
Dr Dimple Tresa Abraham, a researcher at the Center for Women Development Studies, pointed out, “We are so used to seeing women work without wages at our homes that whatever little we pay them at work seems too much.”
Let Justice N V Ramana’s quote serve as a reference point: “The issue of fixing national income for a homemaker, therefore, serves extremely important functions. It is a recognition of the multitude of women who are engaged in this activity, whether by choice or as a result of social/cultural norms.
“It signals to society at large that the law and courts of the land believe in the value of the labour, services and sacrifices of homemakers. It is acceptance of the idea that these activities contribute in a very real way to the economic condition of the family and the economy of the nation, regardless of the fact that it may have been traditionally excluded from economic analysis.
“It is a reflection of changing attitudes and mindsets and of our international law obligations. And, most importantly, it is a step towards the constitutional vision of social equality and ensuring the dignity of life to all individuals.”