Managing mobility: commuting domestic workers, mobile phones, and women’s ‘honour’ in Kolkata

ABSTRACT

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Kolkata and rural West Bengal and engaging with literature on mobile phones in the global South, and on gender and sexuality in India, this article seeks to understand the incongruence between widespread mobile phone use in India and commuting domestic workers’ own accounts of their mobile phone use. It illustrates the important role that mobile phones play in enabling commuting workers (who are mostly women) to find work and manage relationships, but also how commuting workers play down their mobile phone use, guarding against suspicion from husbands, sons, and others. Such suspicion reflects the stigma around women’s mobility/sexuality, connected to ideas about women’s ‘honour’ and the perceived risks associated with women’s work and journeys. When workers’ mobile phone use is, then, perceived to be ‘inappropriate’, or if workers transgress norms and expectations relating to ideas about women’s ‘honour’ in other ways, they can face (further) surveillance and abuse, their access to phones thereafter often being controlled by men. Contributing to gendered analyses of mobile phones in the global South, the article shows how phones can at once create new possibilities and freedoms for commuting domestic workers while at the same time reinforcing gendered power relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• Domestic work
• commuting
• mobile phones
• mobility
• women’s ‘honour’
• India

Acknowledgements

I am immensely grateful to those who shared their stories during fieldwork, and to the team at Parichiti and my assistants (Humaira Chowdhury, Basudha Kushari, and Sohini Saha) for their time, skills, and advice. Huge thanks are also due to: John Zavos, the editor, and anonymous reviewers; my PhD supervisors and examiners (Julie Brownlie, Nandini Gooptu, Hugo Gorringe, and Lynn Jamieson); and readers including Supurna Banerjee, Karen Gregory, and William Howes, all of whom provided thoughtful comments and advice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I use pseudonyms for participants to protect their identities.

2 Basudha was my research assistant; I worked with her to conduct interviews and visits during my PhD fieldwork.

3 Madhabi and others used the English word ‘van’ and the Bengali word ‘gari’ (meaning ‘vehicle’ or ‘car’) interchangeably to refer to a local form of transport consisting of a motorbike with a wooden cart attached to the back for passengers.

4 Like Still (2014, 22-23), I found that being a ‘Western’ woman and ‘outsider’ enabled me to form close relationships with women who were less concerned with shame/modesty.

5 The latest statistics show that there are now around four times as many mobile phone subscriptions in countries classed as ‘developing’ than in those classed as ‘developed’; in 2018, approximately 42% of the 7.9 billion global mobile phone subscriptions were located in China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia alone (International Telecommunication Union 2019).

6 While some commuters’ husbands did work – as van drivers and personal/private drivers – many did not work, or had irregular employment, as auto-drivers, rickshaw-wallahs, painters and decorators, carpenters, or as seasonal agricultural workers and daily labourers (see also: Parichiti 2015, 15-18). For more information on men’s un/underemployment and the lack of access to the means of production in West Bengal, see: Roy 2003, 54, 89-94; Ray and Qayum 2010, 127.

7 Although women would often pay to replace or repair their phones, they also tried to keep costs down by making missed calls and receiving incoming calls where possible (see also: Tacchi, Kitner and Crawford 2012, 535).

8 The Bengali word ‘bhadramahila’ refers to respectable middle- and upper-class woman.

9 It is possible that my affiliation with Parichiti affected participants’ responses in relation to questions about Parichiti, encouraging them to be more positive about the role of the organisation in their lives.

10 ‘Thakur po’ means ‘brother-in-law’ in Bengali but is used more generally to politely address and refer to men.

11 Madhabi was considered the ‘other woman’ in her relationship with Somnath and his new wife, and in the village generally, and so she could not ordinarily meet up with Somath (at least not publicly) without causing trouble for herself. It was unclear whether Madhabi and Somnath had been legally married and whether this was part of the reason she was considered the ‘other woman’.

12 Priya and others often used the English word ‘doubt’ when speaking about this subject.

13 The English word ‘adjust’ was used repeatedly by participants, often when talking about employers and marriage/husbands. It is also used more generally in India, in everyday conversation. It reflects, as Dyson (2017, 274-275) notes, the extent to which people find it necessary to develop makeshift practical solutions to everyday problems, and it also speaks to shifting/downgrading expectations and compromise in social situations (see also: Tyagi and Uberoi 1990).

Additional information

Funding

The research on which this article is based was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of a PhD Studentship [award number: 1221758] and a Postdoctoral Fellowship [grant ref: ES/T008970/1]. I am grateful to the ESRC, as well as the Tweedie Exploration Committee at the University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Association of University Women for the additional financial support they provided during my PhD.

Notes on contributors

Lauren Wilks

Lauren Wilks is a feminist ethnographer and social researcher with interests in work/labour, gender, and inequality. She has a background in history and sociology, and she received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh in 2019. She is currently an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh.