Caste, Kinship, and Life Course: Rethinking Women's Work and Agency in Rural South India

Abstract

This paper reexamines the linkages between women's work, agency, and well-being based on a household survey and in-depth interviews conducted in rural Tamil Nadu in 2009 and questions the prioritization of workforce participation as a path to gender equality. It emphasizes the need to unpack the nature of work performed by and available to women and its social valuation, as well as women's agency, particularly its implications for decision making around financial and nonfinancial household resources in contexts of socioeconomic change. The effects of work participation on agency are mediated by factors like age and stage in the life cycle, reproductive success, and social location – especially of caste – from which women enter the workforce.

Keywords:

• Women's work
• agency
• intrahousehold relations
• kinship
• life course
• India

JEL Codes:

• N15
• Z1

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Nitya Rao is Professor of Gender and Development at the University of East Anglia. She has worked extensively in the field of women's organization, employment, and education for close to three decades. Her current research interests include gendered changes in land and agrarian relations, food and nutrition security, migration and well-being, intrahousehold relations, equity in education programs and policies, and the gendered nature of economic growth. Her research has mainly been conducted in South Asia.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the DFID-ESRC research funding for the project RES-167-25-0251, “The Intra-household Allocation of Resources: Cross-cultural Tests, Methodological Innovations, and Policy Implications,” for making this fieldwork possible. I am also grateful to Amit Mitra, Mina Swaminathan, participants at the BASAS Annual Conference, 2011, and four anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1 See, for instance, Maxine Molyneux (1979) and Lourdes Benería (1982).

2 In the 64th Round of the NSSO, 2007–8, women's work participation declined from the 1993–4 benchmark of 33 to 29 percent in rural areas and 17 to 14 percent in urban areas. Men's work participation remained stable (NSSO 2010).

3 The Constitution of India, through its First Schedule, recognizes 1108 castes (Scheduled Castes) across twenty-five states and 744 tribes (Scheduled Tribes) across twenty-two states as historically deprived and marginalized groups. A three-pronged strategy including protective arrangements, affirmative action/reservations, and development policies were put in place to improve their situation.

4 The price of rice has fluctuated from Rs 2.50/kg in 2006 to Re 1 in 2008, and was made free in 2011 (Judith Heyer 2012).

5 The Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy Maternity Benefit scheme in Tamil Nadu provides support to poor women for a period of nine months: three during late pregnancy and childbirth, and six following birth. In May 201l, the assistance was doubled from Rs 6,000 to 12,000 per birth for the first two births. However, T. K. Sundari Ravindran and P. Balasubramanian (2012) find in their five-district study that only 25 percent of Dalit and landless women are able to access the financial benefits, partly due to the lengthy process of documentation.

6 Cederlof's (1997) historical analysis (1900–70) and Heyer's (2010, 2014) long-term study (1981–2008) proved invaluable for this purpose.

7 1 61.02 as of March 13, 2014.

8 All personal information that would allow the identification of anyone described in this article has been removed.