Abstract
This chapter constructs a gendered account of the city of Delhi through an exploration of women domestic workers’ experience of spatial-mobility in relation to work and the inherent vulnerabilities of class and gender therein. While the narratives of ‘mobility’ highlight the gendered experience of the city, the issue of ‘housing’ allows us to ground these narratives in the politics of class that characterize the millennial city. Such an exploration of housing and mobility, through the lens of gender and class, offers a perspective on how the two constitute domestic work relations in contemporary Delhi.
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Notes
- 1.
Coelho et al. (2013) remains an exception in this regard, who explores the connections between housing for the urban poor and paid domestic work in Chennai.
- 2.
The introduction of the journal Environment and Urbanization 1(2), which discusses the need to move beyond the “slums” because of the multiple types of housing settlements for the poor that exist across the globe. For details, see Environment and Urbanization (1989).
- 3.
One figure representative of this scarcity is reported by the Economic Survey of Delhi, 2012–13. According to the survey, the city has a shortage of 1.65 lakh "residential houses"(p. 197).
- 4.
Delhi Economic Survey, 2008–09 cited in Bhan (2013). The other seven types of settlements include: (1) Rural villages; (2) Urban villages; (3) Resettlement colonies; (4) Unauthorized colonies (5) Regularized unauthorized colonies, (6) Slum designated areas, and; (7) Jhuggi Jhompri Clusters (JJCs).
- 5.
JJCs are what are usually known as "slums", which are characterized by fragile housing structures and poverty (for details see, for example, Bhan, 2009).
- 6.
These three categories are out of the eight official types all the human settlements in Delhi are classified into. The three types of colonies are inhabited mostly by the working class in the city.
- 7.
Minister of State of Labour and Employment in a response to question number 649 on 9 December 2013, asked in Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian parliament), last accessed on 7 June 2015, link: http://labour.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/Divisions/Parliament/LS%20USQ%20649.pdf.
- 8.
ILO in its report on domestic workers worldwide notes the same and mentions that the estimates for India vary between 2.5 and 90 million. The figure of 90 million is a widely cited figure, however, in the light of the other figures like total labour force participation by women in the country, the figure comes across as an unrealistic one. For details see “Domestic workers across the world: Global and regional statistics and the extent of legal protection” (2013).
- 9.
The usage of term “part-time” does not necessarily mean that the workers spend only a small fraction of their day working. They are part-timers for an individual employer who may employ them for a specific task and the workers may have many such employers. Though workers themselves may be spending as much as a full-time worker spends on a usual working-day.
- 10.
Neetha (2009) while analysing the official national figures on the number of domestic workers mentions that men are more likely to be drivers and guards than cooks and house servants.
- 11.
Assam is a state in the north-eastern India. It is approximately 2000 km from Delhi.
- 12.
This is similar to Raka Ray’s (2000) observation of subaltern femininities and notions among women domestic workers in Kolkata.
- 13.
Pande (2010), in the context of how commercial surrogate mothers negotiate the stigma of surrogacy, observes that women gestational surrogates constantly downplay their agency in the choice of their work by attributing it to their helplessness and poverty.
- 14.
The findings of the larger study confirm the association of domestic labour with shame and stigma. There are narratives which offer insight about workers’ notion of the work. However, discussing those narratives is beyond the scope of this chapter.
- 15.
Control over space has been identified as key to any kind of social control (Henri Lefbvre paraphrased in Qayum and Ray, 2003). In domestic work relations, “live-in” arrangement has been seen as one which enhances employers’ control over the workers (Ray and Qayum, 2010). This is something which comes out in the autographical account of Halder and Butalia (2006), who herself is a domestic worker in Delhi.
- 16.
A colloquial Hindi term used by workers to refer to the class of employers. The term literally means people with big houses.
- 17.
Menon-Sen and Bhan (2008) in their study of Bawana resettlement notice that in case of part-time domestic workers the only option was to go back to their old middle-class neighbourhoods as there was no middle-class colony near the resettlement colony at least within 10 km.
- 18.
Yamuna is a drying river. During the monsoons (raining months) the water level in the river increases and causes flood in the areas around its banks. Khadar is one such area that is impacted by the flood in Yamuna.
- 19.
Originally, these vehicles were introduced for transport in rural areas and that is why initially RTV stood for “rural” travel vehicle. But with the expanding usage of the vehicle in urban areas, the name was changed to “road” travel vehicle.
- 20.
See, for example (Vasanthi, 2011), in which the author mentions the issue of inaccessibility of toilets as one of the findings of a study conducted in Hyderabad.
- 21.
See the section on ‘peeing’ in (Phadke et al., 2011) where the author narrates women’s experience of navigating the city in the absence of adequate provision of urinals.
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Acknowledgment
This chapter draws upon the findings of my dissertation, which was submitted to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi in partial fulfilment of the Master’s degree in development studies. I am thankful to Sumangala Damodaran, my dissertation supervisor, for her valuable guidance. I am extremely grateful to Chaitali Halder and Heerawati from Jagori and Maxima Ekka from Domestic Workers’ Forum (DWF) for their generous and extensive support in the fieldwork with women domestic workers. Different versions of this chapter have been presented at different conferences and seminars during the past one year. Some of them include: the Gender, Race and Sexuality Seminar at the European University Institute, Florence (October, 2014); Urban South Asia, 1850—present at the University of Oxford (October, 2014); European Conference on South Asian Studies (ECSAS), Zurich (July 2014), and; 53rd CPR-CSH Urban Workshop Series (June 2014), Delhi. The feedback and thoughts from the participants in these aforementioned forums have enriched the chapter immensely. The chapter has particularly benefitted from the comments of Ben Mendelkern, Saumyajit Bhattacharya, Rohit Negi, Partha Mukhapadhyay, Henrike Donner, Margot Bol, Kathryn Dominique, Eesha Kunduri, Shahana Sheikh, Subhadra Banda and two anonymous reviewers.
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Sonal Sharma (2016). Housing, Spatial-Mobility and Paid Domestic Work in Millennial Delhi: Narratives of Women Domestic Workers. In: Chakravarty, S., Negi, R. (eds) Space, Planning and Everyday Contestations in Delhi. Exploring Urban Change in South Asia. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2154-8_11
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