In the 30 years that she lived in slums around Delhi, India, Syeda X, a destitute migrant woman, worked more than 50 occupations.
She sewed tea strainers, door knobs, picture frames, and toy guns in addition to trimming denim threads, cooking, and shelling almonds. Along with making jewelry and beadwork, she embroidered school bags. Her meager earnings, such as 25 rupees (30 cents; 23 pence), were a result of her laborious assembly of 1,000 toy guns.
The Many Lives of Syeda X, written by writer Neha Dixit, follows the story of Syeda and her family as they move to Delhi from Uttar Pradesh in the mid-1990s, following religious disturbances in the neighboring state. The book, which draws on over 900 interviews conducted over a decade, sheds light on the tenuous existence of a female Indian worker who does her job from the comfort of her own home.
The lives of India’s unacknowledged female home-based workers are brought to light in Ms. Dixit’s book. An individual is considered to be a home-based worker in India if they create goods or services for a business out of their own residence or other designated location, regardless of whether the business supplies the necessary tools or materials. This classification was only given legal recognition as a separate class of workers in 2007.
One example is a kite maker; out of India’s 41 million people who work from home, almost 17 million are women
With the exception of agriculture, the vast majority of India’s working women (over 80%) are involved in some type of informal economy, the most common of which is working from home. But no laws or programs exist to help these women.
About 17 million out of 41 million Indians working from home in 2017 and 2018 were women, according to Wiego, an agency that helps women in informal jobs. About nine percent of the workforce consisted of these women. Their urban population has increased at a quicker rate than their rural counterparts in India. “The center of gravity in home-based workers appears to be shifting to urban areas,” remarks Indrani Mazumdar, a historian who has done substantial work on the subject.
These women fight an uphill struggle against poverty, insecurity, and unfaithful husbands because they lack social security and other forms of protection. They work hard to earn enough money to send their children to school and lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Monsoon waterlogging in their homes causes wastage of their given material, and these women also bear the price of climate change, losing livelihoods and running losses.
Economist Sona Mitra estimates that 75% of India’s female manufacturing workers do their jobs from the comfort of their own homes. “These women are listed as self-employed and they are often overlooked,” she exclaims.
Syeda X and other women who work from home are portrayed in Ms. Dixit’s disturbing story as symbols of oppression and powerlessness. Whoever decides on the pitiful prices for their services remains a mystery. Nobody gives you any kind of guidance, education, or resources. When it comes to learning the ropes, these ladies depend entirely on one another.
Ms. Dixit adds that keeping up with the news cycle is frequently a good way to get work.
Women adorned plastic dolls with hand-stitched white spacesuits in 1997, the year Kalpana Chawla became the first woman of Indian descent to reach space. They sewed hundreds of inexpensive footballs for the 1999 cricket World Cup. A “monkey man” rumor that went viral in 2001 in Delhi caused a surge in demand for masks that resembled the creature, which were sold at traffic crossings. Party flags, key chains, and hats were among the items they produced for use during election season. Crayons, school bags, and bound books were among the items they prepared for the return to school.
Numerous tasks in the ready-made garment business were outsourced to home workers until the 1990s.
Additionally, many women have a hard time finding work-from-home jobs that last more than 20 days per month. The only people who can get employment easily, according to Ms. Dixit’s writing, are those who don’t haggle over prices or ask too many questions, who bring their own tools, who always deliver on time, who never ask for advances or assistance during emergencies, and who can handle late payments.
As to Ms. Mazumdar, the shifts in the nature of the employment have made the lives of female home workers more precarious. Many jobs in the ready-made clothing business were outsourced to people working from home until the 1990s. The 1990s were a turning point because machines began to supplant human workers in several manufacturing processes, including embroidery, and manufacturers started moving jobs in-house. “Home-based work became very volatile,” according to her.
In 2019, the ILO estimated that 7.9% of the world’s workers, or 260 million individuals, worked from home based on surveys of households in 118 countries.
When local governments and trade unions work together successfully, workers’ rights may be protected and working conditions can be monitored in subcontracted or home-based jobs, according to research from Brazil and South Africa.
The AFP On July 15, 2018, a Muslim woman from India washes paper bags at her house and sells them to merchants in Allahabad. – A Starting on July 15, the government of Uttar Pradesh has outlawed the usage of polythene bags and other commonly used plastic goods.The AFP
There are very few instances like this in India. A membership-based organization that brings together low-income women who work in the informal sector is the Self Employed Women’s Association (Sewa), which has been around for 52 years. Microfinance and self-help organizations for home-based workers are available to them. “But these schemes have really not helped them when it comes to employment,” Ms Mazumdar asserts.
A group of women in Delhi went on strike in 2009, among other demands, for higher wages and more time off from their jobs cleaning and shelling almonds. (For 12–16 hours, they cleaned a 23-kilogram bag and received 50 rupees.) During its busiest time of year, the almond processing industry was paralyzed by the strike.
K. Kalpana, a social scientist from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, documented the rights struggles of female subcontractors in the appalams (papadum) industry in Chennai and how they prevailed over government institutions that had previously ignored their demands.
Neither Syeda X nor her companions were fortunate. “Another nameless migrant would fight to take her place if she ever took time off to nurse an illness or attend to her children,” Ms. Dixit writes. As she went from one job to another and one house to another, the only constants in her life were displacement and misery.
