‘We Look at Our Feet and Work’: Women Construction Workers Negotiating Patriarchies in Kolkata, India

Abstract

This is a case study of women workers in the informal construction sector who commute daily to the city of Kolkata in eastern India. While existing studies of women construction workers have considered their worker identity as primary, this study offers an alternative theorising, reading them as women whose identity as workers is embedded in other social identities. In-depth interviews with these women reveal that entrenched patriarchal norms and gender discrimination create structural vulnerabilities, which are in turn compounded by the risk of sexual abuse in the workplace. Nevertheless, the women exercise agency and access jobs with favourable wages through bonding and bridging relationships in a sector dominated by men.