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Women’s Paid Work as a Bubble of Empowerment: A Case Study of a Social Enterprise Working with Women Artisans

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Gendered Inequalities in Paid and Unpaid Work of Women in India

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Abstract

International development agencies often embrace economic development interventions like women's paid work as the panacea of gender inequality and a definitive pathway towards empowerment. Often dominated by the WID and WAD approach, these interventionist agencies advocate a depoliticized and individualized understanding of empowerment where the importance of gender equality is subsumed within the rhetoric of poverty alleviation and economic development. Through an interpretivist qualitative study with a social enterprise, this paper explores the extent to which women’s paid work translates into a process of empowerment at the individual, household and organizational levels. It argues that the process of empowerment through paid work is a ‘bubble of empowerment’ and fragmentary, which does not translate into similar outcomes at different space–time. It also illustrates that economic interventions like ‘paid work’ conform and reproduces the existing gender roles in both the productive and reproductive sphere and capitalize women’s efficiency within dominant neoliberal development discourse.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Women, U. (2018). Facts and Figures: Economic Empowerment. Retrieved 2021, from UN Women: https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/economic-empowerment/facts-and-figures#notes.

  2. 2.

    The research study has been a part of M.Phil. Dissertation of the first author finished in 2018 from the Department of Social Work, University of Delhi.

  3. 3.

    Kabeer (1999) spells the three components of women’s empowerment as Resources, Agency and Achievements. The resources which include material, human and social resources enhance the ability to make choices, are distributed through rules and norms and acquired through multiple social relationships across various institutions of society. Agency refers to the ability to define goals and act on them which can take forms of decision-making, bargaining & negotiation, deception & manipulation, subversion-resistance or reflection-analysis. The extent of decision-making and the access to the resources determine the achievements and the potential for Achievement.

  4. 4.

    https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/6980/350320Empowerm1ctice01OFFICIAL0USE1.pdf%3Bsequence=1.

  5. 5.

    This is not the actual name of the social enterprise. The name of the social enterprise has been changed to maintain confidentiality.

  6. 6.

    Official name of the village situated in Poogal tehsil, Bikaner, Rajasthan.

  7. 7.

    None of the names used in this chapter is of the real participants. Their identities have been concealed to maintain confidentiality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ashank Desai Center for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India

    Kaniska Singh

  2. Max-Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany

    Asfia Jamal

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  1. Kaniska Singh
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  1. Tata Institute of Social Sciences and SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai, India

    Vibhuti Patel

  2. School of Management and Labour Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India

    Nandita Mondal

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Singh, K., Jamal, A. (2022). Women’s Paid Work as a Bubble of Empowerment: A Case Study of a Social Enterprise Working with Women Artisans. In: Patel, V., Mondal, N. (eds) Gendered Inequalities in Paid and Unpaid Work of Women in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9974-0_5

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