Women Workers in India

The problems of women workers in general -- and in the unorganised sector in particular -- deserve special attention and focus in view of their marginalised position within the class of workers. The position of women workers in rural India is considerably lower than that of women in general. The bottom layer is constituted by women belonging to the lowest social status groups. A number of national and international studies have documented the sex-typing of jobs and occupations by women. Occupational segregation represents a form of discrimination. Discrimination on the lines of gender is not always overt. It appears in very subtle forms such as in the nature of work performed, skills required to perform the work and the valuation of these skills and the technology used by men and women. One problem more specific to women is that they are subject to various forms of harassment at the workplace. Verbal and physical violence against women has been an age-old method of subjugating them. Female and child domestic workers constitute a large portion of migrant worker population. Working in the unregulated domain of a private home, mostly without the protection of national labour legislations, allows for female domestic workers to be maltreated by their employers with impunity. This volume contains 16 well-researched papers by scholars in the field of women studies. These scholarly papers explain and examine the various aspects of working conditions of women workers in India.