Land, labour and livelihoods: Indian women's perspectives

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Against the grain: Indian women negotiate land, labour and livelihoods in the new millennium; Bina Fernandez, Orlanda Ruthven and Meena Gopal

Section I. Owning Land, Disowning Women
Chapter 2. Tribal women organising for land rights in Dahod and Panchmahaals, Gujarat; Sita Mamidipudi and Sejal Dand
Chapter 3. Securing land rights for women: government land allocation in Odisha; Sonali Mohapatra
Chapter 4. Deserted and widowed women’s struggle for land and livelihood: a case from Maharashtra; Sneha Bhat
Chapter 5. Claiming space, claiming rights: Inheritance and land rights for Muslim women in Uttar Pradesh, India; Niti Saxena and Soma K. Parthasarathy

Section II. Marginalised and stigmatised labour
Chapter 6. Female labour in tea plantations: Labour process and labour control; Ashmita Sharma
Chapter 7. Sex work as livelihood: Women, men, and transgender sex workers in Karnataka; Shubha Chacko, Subadra Panchanadeswaran, Gowri Vijayakumar
Chapter 8. Nhavi women in Pune city: renegotiating new opportunities for livelihood; Archana Zende

Section III. Education, mobility and skills
Chapter 9. Karma and the myth of the new Indian Super Woman: Missing women in the Indian Workforce; Bhavani Arabandi
Chapter 10. “Here, we are addicted to loitering”: exploring narratives of work and mobility among migrant women in Delhi; Sonal Sharma and Eesha Kunduri
Chapter 11. All aboard the Job Train: Government-funded training and recruitment in India’s apparel industry; Orlanda Ruthven
Chapter 12: Care (un)skilled: fragmented labour markets in nursing, contemporary Kolkata; Panchali Ray

Section IV - Collective strategies
Chapter 13: Making waste matter: Re-imagining urban renewal and advocating for waste-pickers’ right to a dignified livelihood; Sohnee Harshey and Pratibha Sharma
Chapter 14: Self-Employment, waged or unpaid work: influences on the choices of poor women; Dimple Tresa Abraham
Chapter 15: Renegotiating patriarchal bargains? Rural women's collective livelihood initiatives in India; Bina Fernandez.

This book brings together a unique collection of theoretical and empirical analyses of women’s access to land, labour and livelihoods in contemporary India. The authors recognize that gender relations must be viewed intersectionally, along with other social relationships such as caste, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and age, in order to inform an integrated analysis of women’s persistent disadvantage in India. The chapters examine a diverse range of rural and urban livelihoods within sectors such as tea plantations, nursing, hair salons, sex work and waste collection. Documenting the shifts in these sectors in the context of economic liberalization, the authors offer insights on the challenges of development interventions as women negotiate shifts in their livelihood options. Written to engage, the contributions to this book will be of interest both to the general reader and to academics and practitioners in development and gender/women’s studies.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319408644