India has one of the world’s lowest work participation rates for women—an issue that is only belatedly receiving the attention it needs, whether from women’s and other social movements, the agendas of development and the State, or from the public and media at large. This timely volume addresses the multiple worlds of women’s labour in the context of the current crisis besetting women’s work in contemporary India.

How, in India, is work defined and recognised in the first place when the so-called formal sector of employment pertains to less than 6 per cent of the female workforce? What are the theoretical legacies that require greater engagement—from paid and unpaid work, conceptions of care and social reproduction, the nature of capitalism, to notions of caste, class and sexuality—in order to make women’s work and struggles more legible?

Intersectional in orientation, the volume highlights issues that often get lost in many mainstream analyses of labour, including those of Dalit women, women in subsistence agriculture, migrant women, queer women, and women with disabilities. The editors believe that women’s work—normative or otherwise—must be acknowledged in all its diversity. Chapters focus on courtesans, domestic workers in West Asia, women in the beedi industry, SEZ factory girls, stigmatised transpersons, construction workers who may also engage in sex work, teachers, Madhubani artists, anganwadi workers, women in trade unions and self-help groups—to provide critical, insightful accounts of how India is failing its labouring women.

Students and researchers in the fields of women’s studies, gender studies, sociology, development studies, and development economics would find this book an invaluable reference and guide.

Mary e. John is Professor, Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi.

Meena Gopal is Professor, Advanced Centre for Women's Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Publishers’ Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Meena Gopal and Mary E. John

P A R T I
CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVES

1. Marxism, Feminism and the Political Fortunes of Theories
   Mary E. John 
2. Rethinking Gender and Class: Some Critical Questions for the Present
   Samita Sen
3. Trajectories in the Care Discourse: Labour, Gender, Economics and Power
   Rajni Palriwala
4. Crisis in Female Employment: Analysis Across Social Groups
   Neetha N.

P A R T II
HISTORIES OF THE PRESENT

1. Cottage Industry to Home Work: Tracing Women’s Labour in Home-based Beedi Production, c. 1930s–1960s
   Meena Gopal
2. Mujra and Baithak in Bombay: Courtesans’ Affective and/or Sexual Labour
   Geeta Thatra

P A R T III
BEYOND INVISIBILITY: LABOUR FROM THE MARGINS

1. Dalit Women, Dehumanised Labour and Struggles for Dignity
   Shaileshkumar Darokar
2. Subsistence Under Siege: Women’s Labour and Resistance in Eastern India
   Ranjana Padhi
3. Gender, Caste, and Abjected Space: A History of Kerala’s ‘Slum Women’ and their Work
   J. Devika
4. Queer, Labour and Queering Labour: An Inquiry into Gender, Caste and Class
   Sunil Mohan and Rumi Harish
5. Engendering the Disability–Work Interface
   Renu Addlakha

P A R T IV
LABOURING IN NEW TIMES

1. Changing Meanings of Home: Migrant Domestic Work and its Everyday Negotiations
   Bindhulakshmi Pattadath
2. Factory Girls: Life and Work in a Tamil Nadu Electronics Company
   Madhumita Dutta
3. Sex Work, Sex for Work and the Spaces Between: An Interview with Svati Shah
   Mary E. John and Meena Gopal
4. Researching Women Teachers in New Times: Some Preliminary Reflections
   Nandini Manjrekar
5. Women’s Art, Women’s Labour: Ethnographic Vignettes from Mithila
   Sandali Thakur

P A R T V
ORGANISING WOMEN AND THE STATE

1. The Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
   Sreerekha Sathi
2. Women’s Relationship with Trade Unions—The More it Changes...?
   Sujata Gothoskar
3. Rethinking Women’s Labour in the Age of Microcredit: Some Questions
   K. Kalpana