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. Contents: List of Tables List of Abbreviations Publishers’ Acknowledgements Acknowledgements Introduction Meena Gopal and Mary E. John P A R T I CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVES Marxism, Feminism and the Political Fortunes of Theories Mary E. John Rethinking Gender and Class: Some Critical Questions for the Present Samita Sen Trajectories in the Care Discourse: Labour, Gender, Economics and Power Rajni Palriwala Crisis in Female Employment: Analysis Across Social Groups Neetha N. P A R T II HISTORIES OF THE PRESENT Cottage Industry to Home Work: Tracing Women’s Labour in Home-based Beedi Production, c. 1930s–1960s Meena Gopal Mujra and Baithak in Bombay: Courtesans’ Affective and/or Sexual Labour Geeta Thatra P A R T III BEYOND INVISIBILITY: LABOUR FROM THE MARGINS Dalit Women, Dehumanised Labour and Struggles for Dignity Shaileshkumar Darokar Subsistence Under Siege: Women’s Labour and Resistance in Eastern India Ranjana Padhi Gender, Caste, and Abjected Space: A History of Kerala’s ‘Slum Women’ and their Work J. Devika Queer, Labour and Queering Labour: An Inquiry into Gender, Caste and Class Sunil Mohan and Rumi Harish Engendering the Disability–Work Interface Renu Addlakha P A R T IV LABOURING IN NEW TIMES Changing Meanings of Home: Migrant Domestic Work and its Everyday Negotiations Bindhulakshmi Pattadath Factory Girls: Life and Work in a Tamil Nadu Electronics Company Madhumita Dutta Sex Work, Sex for Work and the Spaces Between: An Interview with Svati Shah Mary E. John and Meena Gopal Researching Women Teachers in New Times: Some Preliminary Reflections Nandini Manjrekar Women’s Art, Women’s Labour: Ethnographic Vignettes from Mithila Sandali Thakur P A R T V ORGANISING WOMEN AND THE STATE The Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis Sreerekha Sathi Women’s Relationship with Trade Unions—The More it Changes...? Sujata Gothoskar Rethinking Women’s Labour in the Age of Microcredit: Some Questions K. Kalpana Notes on Contributors Name Index