Symbolic and Material Representations in Home-based Work: A Qualitative Case Study from Ahmedabad, India

• In Event: 470 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session. Striking for Justice in Fast Food, Retail, and Home Care: Implications for the Broader Labor Movement

Abstract

This paper applies a place-based analysis to examine the symbolic and material divisions of the productive and social reproductive labor of women home-based workers. Home-based work has distinct consequences on women’s productive and social reproductive labor. Scholars have noted the gendered aspects of home-based work, and have also noted its role as a new sphere of production developed by global capitalism. The home is witness to significant intersecting social relations of gender and class, and has particular significance for this study. It is a gendered space that allows women to complete their care and paid work, but also a setting appropriated by capital to achieve its flexible and unorganized workforce.

In this paper, I first discuss how home-based workers construct and internalize identities tied to their roles as women and workers. Then, I ask how if and how do place-based practices reveal further understandings of this process. Place-based analysis of home-based work allows us to better understand the gendered experiences and knowledges that are constructed with and within place.

Findings are based on data collected during my ethnographic fieldwork in Ahmedabad, India. I interviewed thirty home-based workers and conducted spatial analysis of the workers’ home and workplace. Research on home-based workers was facilitated with the help of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), one of the first labor unions in India for women in the informal economy.

Author

• Natascia Rose Boeri, City University of New York-Graduate Center