Occupational Prestige and Informal Work: Women Domestic Workers in India

Abstract

This article investigates occupational prestige in informal work taking the case of the Indian female domestic workers, using data from one of the first surveys to explore prestige value of an occupation socially defined as ‘informal’ and ‘menial’. Predictor models are built based on a survey of 1267 female domestic workers, using two categories of experiences, namely, with the job and with the employer, and two categories of processes, namely, social empowerment and economic empowerment. The findings demonstrate a social construction of occupational prestige rather than based on working conditions, where the employer behaviour forms the main and significant part of the definition. Employers are seen to minimize the disbursement of long term benefit like wage increase or weekly leave. Domestic workers, consequently, perceive one time benefits like festival bonus or receiving of old clothes as part of occupational privileges, leading to enhanced occupational prestige. The issue of empowerment, therefore, becomes extremely significant. These results are discussed for their implication from the relational regulation theory perspective.