MARYADA, Membership and Minimum Wage: Collective Action and Intra-Household Relations

Abstract

Earlier work on the transformative potential of women's groups has investigated the struggles and narratives of the group as a whole, with limited exploration of the linkages between women's participation in larger collective action and their individual experiences of intra-household gender relations. Thus, very little is known about the nature of individual agency exercised by women within their interpersonal relations with family members after entering social movements and labor unions. This paper examines such issues by describing the lived experience of collective action and analyzing SEWA's history in organizing women for minimum wages in the agarbatti (incense sticks) sector. It highlights how adherence to gendered norms also referred to as “maryada”—implying social boundaries relating to women's identities as family and community members within patriarchal institutions—influence the entry, exit and experience of union membership and collective action. Women are able to participate in collective action, once unionists acknowledge these social boundaries that poor working women deal with via gendered roles, familial expectations and social networks. My findings illustrate the importance of organizing and labor movements in providing women access to state and market based social security measures. Intra-household and collective security perspectives used in the paper also highlight how women exhibit agency to derive security by using union activities and services to strengthen their positions within collective familial units.