Material #10 - Women organizing in construction
Research by Rina Agarwala compares the experiences and organizing strategies of women in the informal domestic and construction sectors in India.
Through interviews with workers, advocates and others, the research found that:
“While domestic workers’ unity model has had more success in increasing women workers’ dignity and leadership, construction workers’ dualist model has attained more successes in attaining material benefits in the reproductive sphere.”
“Unity model” refers to approaching workers’ struggles in relation to class and in relation to gender as a combined cause, while the “dualist model” involves approaching the two separately. So in the case of construction, a dualist approach means tackling challenges for workers across the sector, as well as inequalities between men and women within the sector, such as “unequal pay, glass ceilings, and embodiment issues, such as sexual harassment, access to toilets, and maternity leave.”
Agarwala sets out the ways in which construction and domestic work are rapidly growing sectors in India’s economy. Both are also characterized by precarious and unprotected work, and generate important insights into the ways in which the boundaries between formal and informal work are increasingly blurred.
For its part, construction constitutes 11% of India’s total economic output and employs 41 million workers: 10% of all workers, and 44% of informal workers within urban areas. Eighty percent of construction employment is informal, and 30% of the construction workforce in India is female - significantly higher than most other countries. (See the full article for sources).
Construction worker organizing has made progress. This includes the creation of welfare boards through which workers can more easily access health care, education scholarships, dowry payments and sometimes pension contributions.
Yet women in construction still face persistent cultural and institutional headwinds. State-sponsored mega- infrastructure projects increasingly hire male-only teams of migrant workers, given a view that this is simpler and more efficient. And there are continued perceptions that women should be paid less and should be restricted to the most menial tasks, such as carrying materials and water, cleaning and mixing cement.
Organizations interviewed for the research shared ways in which women are making the case for change, including within their own households. Gayatri, an activist with FEDINA, says:
Construction is male-dominated. So even the workers didn't agree initially. They kept saying it's right that women are paid less, that they cannot be equal to us.
‘How can my wife earn the same as me’ is what they thought and said what the employers do is right. So we tried to discuss it with them. In a household, both the husband and wife work in construction. And if the woman is not getting paid 300 rupees, who does the 100 rupees go to? The owner is the one who benefits.
So we should fight for what is ours and it’s our responsibility to make sure everyone, both men and women get what they deserve. So now this mindset has come about among them all.
Domestic and construction workers organizations, as Agarwala puts it, are “acknowledging and addressing the connections between productive and reproductive work, as well as between hierarchies at home, the community, and the workplace”.
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Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays.
Read the full article: “From theory to praxis and back to theory: Informal Workers’ Struggles Against Capitalism and Patriarchy in India”, Rina Agarwala
Related: A report I researched and wrote for Building and Woodworkers International - “100 union actions for climate justice”.