Agency And Resistance

Abstract

This study tried to examine the conditions of women workers in one of the most marginalised sections of newlineinformal employment, namely, home-based work. It aimed to understand the vulnerability and newlinemarginalisation inherent in home-based work, as well as highlight the agency of urban poor home-based newlineworkers in resisting such exploitation. Through ethnographic research in a slum in Mumbai, I unveiled newlinethe manner and conditions in which home-based work was performed in low-income settlements. Further, newlineI also examined the workings of a working-women s trade union in Dharavi, Mumbai, to understand why newlineurban poor working-women chose to come together to articulate their interests, how they asserted their newlinecollective voice, the features of this collectivisation process, and the implications of this process on their newlinework and life. newlineThe findings of my study are a result of immersion in the everyday activities of a trade union of working newlinewomen in informal employment in the state of Maharashtra, India. It is affiliated to a labour NGO called newlineLabour Education and Research Network (LEARN) and hence goes by the name LEARN Mahila newlineKamgaar Sanghatana (LMKS; also known as LEARN Working-Women s Union). It is operational in newlinethree cities of Maharashtra Mumbai, Nashik, and Solapur. Integrating a rights-based trade union newlineapproach focusing on issues of work, workplace, and citizenship with a service-delivery NGO approach newlinefocusing on the holistic development of poor working-women and their families, LMKS is a unique newlineexample of the new forms of collectivisation and labour mobilisation in the urban informal economy of newlinecurrent times. The experience of LMKS proves that women with very few resources and several newlineconstraints can be resourceful as well as active agents of individual and collective empowerment, if they newlineare unionised. The study concludes with a discussion on the theoretical implications of this research by attempting a gendered analysis through the Social Relations Framework (SRF; put forth by Naila Kabeer).