Domestic Workers In India Research Articles

The Absence of State Law: Domestic Workers in India

L'Inde, avec ses lois et ses concepts juridiques, ne peut pas, ou ne veut pas, aborder la nature spécifique des travailleuses domestiques, leurs milieux de travail et leurs relations de travail. La non-reconnaissance du foyer en tant que lieu de travail est définie comme un facteur crucial lié à l'invisibilité et à la dévaluation des soins et du travail domestique non payé, ainsi que la majorité du travail effectué par les femmes en Inde. Le sexe, la caste et autres caractéristiques socio-économiques des travailleuses domestiques renforcent cette invisibilité et cette dévaluation, ainsi que les bas salaires et le manque de protection juridique. La complexité de leurs relations de travail empêche les généralisations simples, ce qui rend difficile la formulation de lois. En revanche, celles-ci sont enchâssées dans une économie politique où le travail informel et peu payé, surtout pour les femmes, est encouragé et étendu, ainsi que les institutions non réglementées, comme les agences de placement. Les caractéristiques uniques du travail domestique nuisent également à l'action collective qui peut jouer un rôle pour assurer un changement efficace dans les lois. Tout en décrivant les lois qui peuvent être modifiées pour réglementer le travail domestique, le présent article soutient que la reconnaissance juridique et la protection des travailleuses domestiques rémunérées permettront et forceront un changement fondamental dans la reconnaissance, l'évaluation et la pratique des soins, dans les divisions du travail liées au sexe et dans les politiques économiques et sociales en Inde.

Care arrangements and bargains: Anganwadi and paid domestic workers in India

Abstract.This article explores state and social understandings of care work in India by examining two categories of non‐family care workers – hired domestic workers and Anganwadi Workers/Helpers under the Integrated Child Development Scheme. Classified as “volunteers” in a government programme, the Anganwadi Workers/Helpers enjoy some social standing and relatively extensive unionization compared with domestic workers. Also, domestic workers have to make much harder trade‐offs between their family's livelihood and daily care needs. The economic undervaluation of the care work they perform, however, is common to both categories of workers.

Assembling Webs of Support: Child Domestic Workers in India

This paper uses ethnographic and qualitative interview data with Muslim child domestic workers, their families and employers to investigate the social ties between young workers and their employers. Our analysis shows that working‐class families use children’s domestic work with middle‐class families as part of a web of resources to protect them from economic shocks and to enable them to afford to meet the cost of social obligations. We show that in this particular context, a town in Uttar Pradesh in north India, hiring domestic workers locks employers into relations of social obligation with their employees and their families. We conclude that these webs of support are enabled precisely because the domestic workers are children and not adults; their status as children makes it possible for the labour contract to be mystified and reconfigured as a social relationship.

The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class, and Political Struggle: The Example of Housework

Although the last decade of research on families has contributed enormously to our understanding of diversity in family structures and the relationship of family units to various other aspects of social life, it has, it seems to me, generally failed to identify and address sources of conflict within family life. Thus, the usefulness of this research for understanding women's situation has been particularly limited. The persistence and resilience of family forms in the midst of general social change, often forcefully documented in this research, have certainly helped to goad us, as feminists, to consider what women's interests may be in the mainte-