Episode 1: Reimagining Labour Relations

Over the years, the issues on labour relations regarding women have centred around unpaid/underpaid work, feminization of migration, unfavourable working conditions for women in low-paying jobs and marginalisation of women in decision-making roles. Ayushmita, Anshika and Ludmila choose to reimagine and reassess these labour relations by trying to deconstruct patriarchal capitalism in light of contemporary events. They explore what social justice should look like in the labour market for women and how effective unionisation along with legal reforms can help women workers as feminist leaders.

About the hosts

Ayushmita is a social development researcher interested in gender and specialising in sexual and reproductive health and rights and invisible disabilities. She has worked with organisations like International Growth Centre, J-PAL, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, etc. She works on gender-responsive budgeting, mainstreaming disability in SRHR, and neurodiversity inclusion at workplaces. She is also a painter, cook, gardener, and cat mom and believes in cat revolution.

Anshika is currently working as a political consultant. She has worked with nonprofits, think tanks on different issues and considers herself as an imperfect feminist who desires to learn.

Ludmila Khan is a development professional from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Development Studies and has previously worked in organisations such as the UNDP. One of her major areas of interest for the last few years has been to rehabilitate the sex-workers in Bangladesh and to help build a strong footing for their children in mainstream society.

Content Warnings (mentions or allusions to): Oppression of Women, Exploitation of Women’s Labour, Financial Abuse, Poverty, Oppression of Migrant Workers and Factory Workers, COVID 19, Colonising, Forced Sterilisation, Patriarchy, Capitalism, Violence, Hysterectomy

Transcript

Ayushmita

Hello and welcome to “Explorations on Feminist Leadership by OneFutureFellows2022”, a podcast by the 2022 cohort of the One Future Fellows, where we discuss, examine, and learn about all things about feminist leadership. I am Ayushmita and my pronouns are she/her.

Anshika

Hi everyone, I’m Anshika and my pronouns are she/her.

Ludmila

Hello, I am Ludmila, my pronouns are she/her and today we will be discussing about how we can reimagine labour relations by understanding how labour relations intersect with feminist values.

Anshika

So to understand the labour relations, we did a lot of research, trying to understanding how we work, how our work means and helps work, and how all industries function, hire and pay labour. And how does this intersect with women’s rights and impacts the life of the marginalized women?

Ayushmita

We will also talk about who does our work and why should all feminist leaders care about it?

Ludmila

You know, every time I think of labour relations, my inner feminist always directs me towards the unpaid labour of housewives, who in this case, happens to be my mother. I grew up seeing my mother do all the household chores, and yet when someone asked her what her occupation was, she would always reply that she did not do anything. And this kept bugging me as a child until, you know, many years later as an undergrad student, I did this course in gender and development and I learned that feminists actually have a term for it, and Robin Morgan calls this as Gross National Product Invisibility.

Ayushmita

When you think about it, the term invisibility is quite significant here because it also in a way, indicates how women have been forced to be invisible in spaces of power and decision-making, simply because we do not acknowledge what they do as work. I can think of another powerful quote – “Women do everything but control nothing.”

Anshika

This invisibility, underrepresentation, denial – whatever you want to call it, has been backed by almost all statistics for decades. The UN Women statistics report that women’s unpaid care or domestic work is equivalent to 10, add to 39% of the GDP across the world, and can contribute to the economy more than sectors such as manufacturing, commerce or transportation.

Ludmila

And to this day, no matter how much we have advanced in the path of feminism, it is still very much true that domestic work or care work is still seen as women’s work and it is mostly done by women. For example, in India and Bangladesh, it is reported that women spend 7 and three times, respectively, more than their male counterparts doing domestic and care work. You know, like Ayushmita said, she talked about invisibility. This invisibility does lead to women being oppressed because when you’re doing household chores all the time and not getting paid for it, it means you’re being financially dependent on the male or other earning family members. And as such, women have no access to the decision-making spaces in the families, which also translates to their position in the broader society. Also, since women are expected to do domestic work, it means that they get to spend less time in paid labour and even when they’re engaged in paid labour, coming back home, they’re still expected to do the domestic work, which means they have a double day or the second shift, which means despite working longer hours than men, they’re still not compensated financially. And at the same time, I think the fact that women are expected to do work at home is also a mechanism that restricts them to the private space of life, which restricts their physical and economic mobility, their opportunities to learn and also other opportunities that could have enabled them to earn and participate in the formal labour market, which in a way provides a structural advantage to men across culture societies.

Ayushmita

Something that I always have wondered about, is how women’s housework that is quite visible and relevant in our day-to-day lives is equally invisible in the economy. It is what sustains not only families, but the work that women do in their homes is what sustains the economy. Think about the care work they provide for the elderly and the children. Their work essentially substitutes social services, benefiting governments in many countries.

Anshika

Actually, Ayushmita, I can think of a campaign that held very similar views, the Wages for Housework campaign by Maria Della Costa and Salma James. It added that women provided food, clothes, emotional care to current and future workers and in a way kept capitalism functioning. They also demanded that men’s employers compensate women for their housework, that an insured benefits the employers, otherwise they would have to finance this through their own money.

Ludmila

Wow. Thinking of how women’s domestic work has so much economic significance and so often is not considered as actual work makes me wonder who gets to define what work is. I feel like I’ve been quoting Robin Morgan a little too much in this podcast, but I find her quote to be very relevant for this portion. She says that “women are the world’s proletariat and have no voice even in defining what work means”. When you look at the work of socialist feminists, they use the concept of ‘capitalist patriarchy’ or ‘patriarchal capitalism’ to show how women have no agency in defining work. You know patriarchy says that women should do the work at home and that helps capitalism in determining that males will be the primary labor force, as they’re no longer restricted to stay at home. As a result, the combination of capitalism and patriarchy ensures that women are the secondary labor force and that they’re not compensated properly for their work.

Anshika

Actually, Ludmila, I think the domestic workers/helpers we have today are the perfect examples of patriarchal capitalism or capitalist patriarchy like you just mentioned. In fact, an International Labour Organization report said that among the 75.6 million domestic workers worldwide, 76.2% were women. And this reinforced the idea that housework, even then at a spade is still very much a woman’s to me. And even if you look at, you know, Siri – all these electronic instruments are also in the sense, speak in a feminist voice. So it just talks about it being women.

Ayushmita

Quite unsurprisingly, domestic work under capitalism is considered informal labour, meaning that even when employed women domestic workers are deprived from the provisions of labour laws and Social Security, proving that they are still seen as the secondary labour force.

Ludmila

You two are absolutely right. You know, I come from a very well off family in Bangladesh and just like most of the people I know, I have had domestic workers in my household all my life and they have all been women. You know, while I was researching on the domestic workers in Bangladesh for this podcast, I kept remembering something that my mother very often says. She would talk about one of the domestic workers who work in our house and she’d tell me, you know, she works twice as hard than most people I know. Yet somehow she never manages to come out of poverty. And you know, I would actually be surprised if she managed to stop being poor because of the structural disadvantage she has. I was reading a policy brief by an organisation that works for women domestic workers, and they reported that a domestic worker in Bangladesh earns only 59 U.S. Dollar per month, which is equivalent to 5000 Bangladeshi Taka. And in one of my courses during my undergrad, I actually calculated the poverty line income in 2021 in Bangladesh and that was 16,000 BDT, which means that domestic workers aren’t below the poverty line income, meaning that it’s not possible for them to come out of poverty. And since I’m talking about their wages and how it’s below the poverty line, it made me wonder who determines these wages? And apparently, one of the reasons why domestic workers cannot bargain for regular or more pay is because they have no bargaining power. And I think this is exactly where feminist leadership comes into play and can help us in envisioning a better future for domestic workers. In Bangladesh, domestic work is still informal labour, so they don’t have the legal backing for forming trade unions. But the workers who are part of informal trade unions, they report that they were able to bargain for better wages due to their collective organisation. And I think if the people or the policymakers who work for the welfare of the domestic workers, if they could encourage more feminist leaders to form trade unions for domestic workers, then this would be a way in which we can solve the plights of the domestic workers. Something that I found relevant in this case is that during COVID-19, a lot of the factory workers, since they have trade unions, they could bargain for their jobs and they could bargain for health equipment while they were working. But for domestic workers, even though they are very essential in our daily lives, since they don’t have that formal unionisation, they not only lost their jobs but the people who kept working in the middle of the pandemic, they did not have any access to proper health equipment. So that’s for me, that’s a space where feminist leadership can work.

Ayushmita

Talking about labour in today’s time is quite incomplete without diving into the migrant workers’ plight during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in India. Here we saw a large number of migrant workers trying to go back to their villages, their homes. The lockdown was not thought out or pragmatic at all, it was as if we do not care about those who do not enjoy sufficient social security. And even within the scope of migrants, women migrants are the most marginalised.

Ludmila

Yes, in fact, over the last decade there has been significant feminization of migration in all the developing countries. Women are no longer migrating just to get married, but to also find better work opportunities and to supplement their family incomes. Laws and policies have not been able to keep up with this shift. We see that the migration patterns are not studied well. There is no data collection at the national level. Female migration is still poorly studied and special health related concerns of female migrants is also not well understood. This leads to an incredible lack of systematic data collection and even poor monitoring of the situation. And this is very much a feminist issue.

Anshika

Absolutely, Ludmila! And in fact 50% of the women who migrate for work are domestic workers and they are engaged in jobs such as cleaning, cooking and taking care of children. They also work in the tailoring and construction industry and factories. We will talk about each of these areas of work and associated problems to make it clearer for our listeners just how deep rooted this problem is and what is its magnitude. Ayushmita, why don’t you give our listener some numbers?

Ayushmita

Sure. Female migrant workers, regardless of the industry in which they are working, live in extremely poor conditions. They have a monthly income of less than 5000 Indian National Rupees. Only about 17 to 18% of them have a bank account which they actively use, making them severely financially vulnerable. The issue is that our labour laws continue to ignore the fact that there are thousands of women who are employed in the informal sector and that there is no law or policy protecting their rights. 70% of women who are migrant workers in India do not get paid for any overtime. They are also frequently called to work beyond their usual hours, which is not surprising because their work is unregulated and unprotected. If we take the example of the construction industry, which is the second last largest industry in India after agriculture, 49% of the labourers in this industry are women, which is almost half. But these women are denied skilling opportunities because of which they are never able to become masons or carpenters. They continue to remain unskilled and toil in construction sites. Women are even paid less than their male counterparts. A woman will earn ₹300 a day, whereas a man doing the exact same job will get ₹500 per day. There are no toilets, no safe equipment and many of these women hail from some of the poorest parts of India. They do not know their rights. The contractor benefits from this and the government has also been unable to regulate the situation.

Ludmila

Not just that, safety is also a major issue and I’d like to thank you both for introducing me to the Indian laws and realising that they are a double edged sword for women informal workers. A lot of women are losing opportunities in the manufacturing industries because of laws which date back to pre pre-independence era and which have definitely not aged well. As per these laws, women cannot work in factories between 7:00 PM and 5:00 PM, and this often becomes a reason why they are not promoted to managerial roles. This is something that’s also similar to the RMG industries in Bangladesh, which we will talk about later in this podcast. And interestingly, states have made provisions for nurses and midwives to work beyond these hours because these are considered typically feminine roles.

Anshika

Exactly. So if we are citing safety, disallowing women to work beyond 7:00 PM in an establishment, by the same logic they should not have to work in stretches at these hours too. right? I mean, I think we as a society have the tendency to bend the laws in a way which suits our patriarchal mindsets.

Ayushmita

Absolutely. Women are banned from working in so-called dangerous situations and areas which need a lot of physical and manual work. Now this is intriguing because even though it has been decades since safe equipment has been introduced in the industries, the law has not changed. In fact, the construction industry, which is something that we just talked about, is full of manual tough work. And these laws do not apply there because we need our buildings to be built on cheap, disposable labour. The female body continues to be colonised 7 decades after the colonisers left and our bodies are seen as means to generate progeny. In fact, one law in India actually says that women cannot work in like liquor shops to avoid sexual violence. It is as if our mere presence and the fact that we are trying to make a living is reason enough for violence.

Ludmila

In fact, Ayushmita, we should ask the listeners to read about what is in the big district of Maharashtra, like you were telling me the other day.

Ayushmita

Oh, definitely. In Maharashtra, where female farm workers and sugar cane plantations are forced to undergo hysterectomies so that they can work longer hours, do not get periods, etc. We will add some resources in the show notes and I will urge our listeners to take a look at it.

Anshika

Actually, I think in my dictionary all this is violence.

Ayushmita

Yeah, absolutely.

Anshika

So now that we have been talking about the migrant workers, etc., have you guys actually heard about the unpaid workers at Istanbul? Especially the female workers who hid notes about the unfair working hours and unsafe working conditions and poor pay and attached them to the dresses?

Ayushmita

Yeah, and these industries are more women dominated right.

Ludmila

Absolutely. You know Bangladesh has been doing very well economic growth wise and one of the main reasons for such economic success is the readymade garments industry and what I find surprising and perhaps very appalling is the fact that majority of the workers in these industries are women and they’re treated very unfairly.

Anshika

Well, you both are absolutely right. You know what, more than 70% of the garment workers in China are women. And as Ludmila already mentioned, in Bangladesh the share is like 85% and in Cambodia there’s almost 90%. But you know, the assumption that the development and your empowerment are correlated is actually just not true because those women are earning money but they are still not very empowered.

Ayushmita

I agree, absolutely. Development is so much more than just earning wages. It is about having work security, moving out of poverty, providing education and health care for children, growing as an individual. It is so much more.

Ludmila

And I find it so sad how most of the workers, especially women, in the global South, are deprived from all this.

Anshika

Yeah, in fact I think most of the workers, they just work for poverty wages and in absolutely dreadful conditions and they have to do an excessive amount of overtime. In fact in Bangladesh, which is like the world’s second largest exporter of clothes, the minimum wage for garment workers is just 5300 Taka, which is far from the 8900 Taka that are needed to cover a worker’s basic needs and is further away from a living wage. Many garment workers work between 60 to 140 hours of overtime per week, and it is common to be cheated of the overtime pay.

Ayushmita

Oh, let’s not even go into health and safety. Women workers are denied even washroom breaks in some cases.

Ludmila

And you know what? Factory owners have been taking advantage of women’s unequal position in society to form an even cheaper, more docile and flexible workforce. And you know, since I was talking about domestic workers before, I think it is like a common trend to exploit poor, marginalised women in general. So rather than challenge their subordination in society, work in the garment industry is reproducing it.

Ayushmita

Absolutely.

Ludmila

Instead of empowering women, I feel like all these employment opportunities are acting as a mechanism to further make them more subordinated and more marginalised. You know, women tend to earn significantly less than men. They face systematic discrimination, and they’re only able to access the lowest paid jobs with very poor prospects for promotion. Many of them have low work security, and if they’re not prepared to work on the terms set out by their employers, they run the risk of losing their jobs. So whether it’s the garment industry or whether it’s the domestic work industry, the scenario for women workers doesn’t really change.

Anshika

Oh yeah, in fact, in many places women are not even part of the unions. Though many brave women from Bangladesh to Cambodia to Honduras, they are defying the threat, violence, oppression, and the capitalist forces in order to defend their basic rights. Their struggle is the key for the development of workers, their families and whole societies. And it is also an empowering effect for the other women who are majorly marginalised and discouraged to act politically. This could be really emancipatory change for women and a chance to move out of poverty and become stronger and more independent.

Ayushmita

After our discussion, we think it is important that we make some recommendations that can ensure the incorporation of a feminist lens that we are re-imagining when we talk about labour relations. We recommend and strongly advocate for redefining the concept of work, grassroots unionisation of female workers which will ensure representation, define minimum wages, legal reforms, inclusive social security and benefits, occupational health and safety measures, and upskilling for female workers across labour markets.

Ludmila

We talked about a lot of things and honestly, I have always been very, very interested to understand labour relations through a feminist lens. For me, it’s very important that we question who gets to define what work is and why women, in most cases, are delegated to work that puts them into danger, and that does not compensate them according to the work they’re doing. So like we said, feminist leadership is essential in understanding and reimagining labour relations because it will push women into leadership positions where they’re going for more collective actions and where they’re trying to unionise and have more bargaining power in a society that structurally disadvantages them at every single stage. So for our listeners, I would really ask them to reflect on what we have discussed and maybe add their own ideas and thoughts to it. We really appreciate your support.

Ludmila

If you like this episode, please follow us on Instagram and Facebook @OneFutureCollective and @onefuture_india on Twitter. And keep an eye out for future episodes of “Explorations on Feminist Leadership by #OneFutureFellows2022”.

Ludmila

Please leave your questions, comments, or feedback for us on Anchor or in our DMs. We look forward to hearing your thoughts. Until next time, take care of yourself and we hope that we can explore more together. I’d like to end the podcast with the hope for a world that is more feminist and that aspires for social justice across all sectors.

Sochcast Ad:

Like this Sochcast? Tune in for more, with the Sochcast app from the Google Play Store.

End of the Transcript

Resources mentioned by the hosts

Wages for Housework Campaign: https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/activism/organizations/wages-for-housework/