Abstract
A formalized workforce ensures economic stability, but the majority of the workforce engages in informal livelihoods. Professional women require support for which they engage women domestic workers (WDWs) hailing from marginalized and underprivileged sections. During the COVID-19 pandemic in India, such workers were the hardest hit. Middle-class and well-off sections managed to deal with the pandemic as the majority of them received salaries from their profit-making institutions while working from home, whereas WDWs were asked not to report for work to practise social distancing measures. They found it difficult to sustain their family due to the loss of income as fallout of stricter measures enforced to curtail the pandemic. The chapter aims at analysing the precarious socio-economic conditions faced by WDWs. The objectives are to analyse the causes accentuating the struggles of workers, their relationship dynamics with the employers and the role of stakeholders to balance the power relationship. The secondary data on the WDW’s conditions was collected from published journal and newspaper articles. Data about the informal settlements have been collected from the publications of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, the Government of India, the International Labour Organization and Participatory Research in Asia. The in-depth interviews using the snowball sampling technique were conducted with 5 WDWs in Bengaluru, to gather information on their socio-economic conditions in pre- and post-lockdown. The chapter concludes that WDWs, the providers of support to working professionals, are perceived as an obstacle during COVID-19. The multitudinous consequences of the lockdown impacted their socio-economic well-being. It recommends that capacity building is the way forward for ascertaining their rights and balancing the power dynamics. Civil society organizations shall play a proactive role to ensure their rights.
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Yadav, V., Jacob, S. (2023). Informalized Workforce of Women Domestic Workers: Case of Bengaluru Metropolitan Region. In: Cirella, G.T., Dahiya, B. (eds) City Responses to Disruptions in 2020. Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7988-2_5
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