Gender and Migration: Negotiating Rights: A Women's Movement Perspective
Date
From: 02 April 2012 16:15
Till: 02 April 2012 17:45
Location:
Room 4.14
Description
Development Research Special Seminar by Indrani Mazumdar and Indu Agnihotri
About the seminar
The study of gender dimensions of economic migration - a country of sub-continental proportions, has been dogged by several constraints in the empirical as well as theoretical/conceptual realm. Women overwhelmingly outnumber men in the official macro-data on migration in India, but female labour/employment migration has always been undercounted to a degree that renders it insignificant. Some micro-studies indeed focused on female labour migration, even as the larger picture continued to remain elusive. It is in such a context that the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi (CWDS) undertook a large scale research study on Gender and Migration in India. Drawing primarily on a meso-level survey that was the centerpiece of the CWDS study, this seminar will engage with questions and issues that have emerged from the field of micro-research while maintaining a focus on the macro-picture of the gendered structure of labour migration and its links with the pattern of economic growth in contemporary India.
Among the issues that will be addressed are the paradoxical evidence of greatly enhanced female migration in a context of falling female work participation rates and indeed an absolute reduction in the numbers of women workers in the country in recent years. It will discuss the interlinked processes of devaluation of women’s paid and unpaid work, expansion of dowry and village exogamy, all heightened and accelerated by agrarian crisis and other market/commerce driven changes taking place in rural India as factors in enhancing migration for marriage by women.
The seminar will outline the sectoral composition of male and female labour migration in both rural and urban areas and the share of migrants in the paid workforce of the country. Evidence on the modes and manner of labour migration and the way it fits into the gendered structuring of the labour market will be among the issues taken up in the seminar. The continuance of tied labour regimes in some sectors, the implications of migrant male female pairs or family based laboring units servicing even modernized production and accumulation regimes, the concentration of women migrants in a relatively narrow band of occupations, and the role of the agency of women migrants are other issues that will be discussed
The empirical basis of the seminar challenges some assumptions that have become commonplace in approaches to women’s migration and women’s work. On the one hand, the low shares of women in labour migration for industry and diversified services runs counter to the assumption that liberalization and globalization leads to feminization of labour and migration. In fact, the escalated devaluation of women’s traditional work is today confronted with constrictions and a narrow range of options, rather than compensation or adequate expansion/diversification in paid employment opportunities for women.
On the other hand, the predominance of temporary and circular migration indicates structural limitations to the migration enterprise in effecting durable sectoral/occupational shifts away from agriculture and degraded semi-feudal social relations, more so in the case of women migrant workers. Accelerated GDP growth in mainly services, but also in industry has not generated commensurate demand in terms of employment, which is why the conditions of employment are so uncertain and labour migration in India so predominantly temporary in nature. The seminar will thus raise several questions that challenge the assumptions of the neo-liberal strategy of growth and its continuing agenda of ‘reforms’.
About the speakers
Indu Agnihotri and Indrani Mazumdar are coming as visiting researchers in ISS, as part of the activities of the project on “Migration, Gender and Social Justice” financed by IDRC. More information about the project available at http://www.iss.nl/research/research_programmes/international_migration_and_human_security/projects/idrc/
INDU AGNIHOTRI (indu@cwds.ac.in)
Senior Fellow, Deputy Director, Centre for Women’s Development Studies
Area of Interest : Gender and History -- The Women’s Movement in India -- Developing a Women’s Studies Programme at the Centre
Major Publications
| Globalization, Resistance and Change: Reflections on South Asian Women’s Experiences in Bhatia, Bhanot and Samanta (eds.) Gender Concerns in South Asia: Some Perspectives, Rawat, Jaipur, 2008. |
| Women’s Movement and Governance: Issues and Challenges, in Smita Mishra-Panda (ed.) Engendering Governance Institutions: State, Market and Civil Society, Sage, New Delhi, 2008. |
Recent ARTICLES PUBLISHED
| “In the Struggle for Food Security in India: Issues and Experiences from a Campaign”, for Society for International Development, (SID-SAN); Paper available on Internet |
| Indu Agnihotri and Vina Mazumdar, “Changing Terms of Political Discourse: Women's Movement in India, 1970s-1990s”, in T.K. Oommen (ed.) Social Movements II A Reader, Concerns of Equity and Security; OUP, New Delhi, 2010 |
| Vina Mazumdar and Indu Agnihotri, “Democracy Freedom and Development: The Struggle for Women’s Emancipation in India” in Bijaylakshmi Nanda (ed.) Understanding Social Inequality: Concerns of Human Rights, Gender and Environment, Macmillan, New Delhi, 2010 |
| “Towards equality, on the Women’s Reservation Bill”, Cover Story Frontline, Vol. 27, March 27- April 09, 2010 |
| Indu Agnihotri and Indrani Mazumdar, “Dusty Trails and Unsettled Lives: Notes on Women’s Labour Migration in Rural India”, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Sage, Vol. 16 No. (3) Sept.-Dec 2009 |
| ‘Women Power’, cover story Frontline, Vol. 25, Issue 11, 24 May-6 June 2008 |
| Living in Interesting Times: Reflections on the Women’s Movement in Contemporary India, Paper on Internet for School of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi |
INDRANI MAZUMDAR (indrani@cwds.ac.in)
Senior Fellow, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi
BOOKS
| Women Workers and Globalization: Emergent Contradictions in India, Stree, Kolkata, 2007 |
Recent RESEARCH PAPERS AND ARTICLES
| ‘Missing the Wood for the Trees, The Human Development Report, 2009’, Women’s Equality, Number 1, January-March, 2010 |
| Co-author of Introduction to Undoing Our Future, A Report on the Status of the Young Child in India, FORCES (Forum for Creche and Child Care Services), New Delhi, 2009 |
| ‘Dusty Trails and Unsettled Lives: Women’s Labour Migration in Rural India’, The Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 16 (3), September-December, 2009 |
| Public-Private Partnership in ICDS: Privatisation vs. Universalisation’, Labour File, Volume 6 Nos: 4-5, July-October 2008 |
| ‘Women’s Unpaid Labour in Neo-liberal India’, The Indian Historical Review, Volume XXXV,No 2, July 2008 |
| Public-Private Partnership in ICDS: Privatisation vs. Universalisation’, Labour File, Volume 6 Nos: 4-5, July-October 2008 |
This event is part of the IDRC-ISS Migration, Gender and Social Justice Project.
Publication date: Thursday, 23 February 2012
