Abstract: This article studies the employment of women in the textile industry of India. It examines the patterns of women’s employment in both the organised and unorganised sectors of this industry. The textile industry offers a valuable case study of male-female wage differentials, gender-biased division of labour and also the impact of affirmative action on the employment of women.
In the textile mills of Mumbai, women formed a quarter of the workforce in the 1850s, 22.9 percent in the l930s, 11.17 percent in the 1950s and a mere 1.1 percent in 2002. The low Workforce Participation Rate for women in the mills has been primarily due to two reasons. The first and most important reason is the strict gender-based division of labour. The other reason is the prohibition of women from working in the night shift. Even in the unorganised power loom sector, WPR for women is very low, a mere 4 percent of the total workforce. Here too, there is a clear division of labour on the basis of gender. Women are confined to the lowest paying jobs and labour laws are openly flouted in the unorganised powerlooms sector, with women enjoying none of the social security benefits due to them.
Keywords: National Textile Corporation (NTC), SM Mills, Handloom/Mill/Powerloom sector, Workforce Participation Rate, Textile industry and Wages, Powerlooms of Bhiwandi, women workers, women’s employment, labour bureau
The textile industry, one of the oldest industries in the country, is India’s single largest industry. After agriculture, it is the largest employer, providing employment to approximately 21 million people. Even while going through a period of recession, the textile industry in 2000-2001 contributed about 14 percent to industrial production and 27 percent to the country’s export earnings (Ministry of Textiles 2001). The structure of the textile industry is extremely complex. It can be broadly divided into three sectors: handloom sector, mill sector and powerloom sector. It is estimated that in the year 2000, around 12 million people were employed in handloom sector. A majority of these were generally self employed. Around 1 million were employed in the mill sector and, as per official estimates, 6.6 million were employed in the powerloom sector. However, industry estimates put this figure at around 8 million (Ministry of Textiles 2001).
Since the textile industry is highly labour intensive, the study of employment of women in this industry assumes significance. However, women workers constitute a small percentage of total workers in this industry. In 1995, women accounted for only 10.7 percent of the total workforce. Indeed the textile industry is very much male dominated. A comparison with other Asian countries led a significantly higher percentage of women workers. Examples are Taiwan, China, with 54 percent of female employment, the Republic of Korea with 51 percent, and Malaysia with 45 percent, all in 1995 (ILO 2001).
The textile industry in India also provides a typical example of the division labour on the basis of gender and a valuable case study on the impact of affirmative action on the employment of women. In the textile industry today, women are to be found mainly as winders and packers. Women’s gradual loss of livelihood as spinners is documented in various studies. According to the Report of the Commission on the Status of Women, 1975, out of the 200 different operations in the textile industry, women are found in only four or five today, whereas in the pre-war years they were found in about 80.
Women Workers in Textile Mills of Mumbai
A large number of textile mills, plagued by sickness, have today downed utters but they were once the largest source of employment in the city. The textile industry of Mumbai, developed in the 1850s, was one of the main industries employing women. The first factories were spinning mills, which spun into coarse yarn for domestic handicraft production and for exports abroad. Women formed a quarter of the workforce (Morris, 1965, 4). Subsequently this oscillated between one-fifth and one-fourth. In 1919, women constituted 20.3 percent out of the labour force. This proportion rose to 22.9 percent in 1930, that year onwards there was a steady decline in their proportion from 18.9 percent in 1934 to merely 14.9 percent in 1939 (Kumar 1992: 123). In absolute numbers the peak year for the employment of women in Mumbai’s mills was 1926. Between 1926 and 1939, the average daily employment of women in the mills went down from 35,541 to 21,757, that is, a reduction of over 11,000 or 34 percent. Since then, the decline in women’s employment has been constant, so that in 1947 they constituted 11.17 percent of the labour force, in 1955, 8.47 percent, in 1965, 3.83 percent, in 1975, 1.97 percent, in 1980, 1.6 percent and in 2002, a mere 1.1 percent (Table 1).
Table 1: Women Workers as Percentage of Total Textile Workers in Mumbai
Year |
Total Number of Workers |
Women Workers |
Percentage |
1884 |
39716 |
8816 |
22.20% |
1895 |
73865 |
18275 |
24.74% |
1899 |
80498 |
18952 |
23.54% |
19l0 |
102275 |
21581 |
21. 10% |
1920 |
113495 |
22296 |
19.64% |
1 920 |
140898 |
28717 |
20. 38% |
1925 |
146244 |
32396 |
22.15% |
1930 |
127578 |
29163 |
22.86% |
1934 |
128420 |
24319 |
18.94% |
1939 |
145691 |
21757 |
14.93% |
1947 |
205491 |
22962 |
11.17% |
1951 |
196363 |
18421 |
9.38% |
1 955 |
203391 |
17219 |
8.47% |
1961 |
208000 |
11100 |
5.34% |
1965 |
192786 |
7386 |
3.83% |
1970 |
174167 |
4231 |
2.43% |
1 975 |
1 67819 |
3308 |
1.97% |
1980 |
250000 |
4992 |
2.00% |
2002 |
40000 |
450 |
1.13% |
Source: Till 1947, Morris D. Morris, Emergence of an Industrial Working Class, Oxford University Press, 1955; till 1975, Mira Savara, Changing Trends in Women’s Employment- A Case Study of the Textile Industry in Bombay, Himalaya Publishing House, 1986; 1980 and 2001 ffigures: Rashrtiya Mill Mazdoor Sangh.
In order to understand the causes behind the decline in the proportion of women workers in Mumbai’s textile mills, it is necessary to discuss the process right from the beginning.
Since the inception of the textile industry in Mumbai, women worked in only two sections of the mills. Eighty percent of the women workers worked in the winding section, which was a hand-operated process involving no machinery and 20 percent worked in the reeling section, where machinery with moving parts was involved. Women were restricted to only two departments in the mill because during this period they were reluctant to work with male workers. It is reported that mill owners had offered women work in departments where there were male workers but the women had refused. Thus, in the beginning, division of labour on the basis of gender was necessary since women were not willing to work with men. The reason why women’s labour was segregated to only two departments was that there were not sufficient women workers to work in other departments on an exclusively women basis (Savara: 1986, 22).
The inadequate supply of women workers in Mumbai’s textile industry related to the nature of labour supply to the cities during this period. In the initial stages of the textile industry, there was a shortage of labour in the urban areas. The majority of labour was drawn from Ratnagiri, an underdeveloped region of Maharashtra, where land was unproductive. The practice was for the man to migrate, leaving his wife and family behind to look after the land. This fits the general tendency that the more unproductive the land, the more they tend to be basically women’s concerns. Thus, the fact that Ratnagiri was a backward area with low agricultural productivity meant that there was a tendency of male migration to the cities and female headed farms in Ratnagiri (Savara 1986).
Women workers in the cities were primarily widows or from families who had no land. A survey was conducted on 1462 workers (26.7 percent of whom were women) in Mumbai’s mills in l927-28. This survey indicated that 12 percent of women workers were below the age of 20 years, 54 percent were in the age group of 25-30 years, 28 percent were in the age group of 35-50 years and 6 percent were over 50 years. Whereas 74 percent of the men working in the textile mills were married and only 3 percent widowed, of the women working in the textile mills, 44 percent were widows and 55 percent married. (Savara, 1986).
The first labour laws to develop in India related to the working conditions of women and child workers in the textile industry. While the Factories Act, 1881, restricted the hours of work for children, an amendment to the Factories Act 1891, provided for a one day weekly holiday and a half-hour lunch break for all workers. Women workers were not allowed to work before 5 a.m. or after 8 p.m. and could work for a maximum of 11 hours. The legislation, passed in response to women’s social role as housewife, was an attempt to create the conditions which would enable women to combine the roles of both housewife and worker. The legislation did not lead to any changes in the employment of women.
This was because women had been working on a piece rate basis and tended to work a shorter working day in any case. More important, during this in the late 1890s there was a shortage of labour for the mills. Therefore, labour had to be employed whenever available. (Savara 1986)
When electricity was introduced in the mills in 1904, working hours of males were extended beyond daylight and working days of up to 14 hours became common. This forced the government to pass a lanw restricting the hours of work for men to 12 hours. The hours of work for women remained 11 hours. Legislation, relating to maternity was passed in 1929 and for provision of crèches in 1934. While maternity benefits were paid regularly by 1934, the starting of crèches did not proceed very fast. The 1934 Act made it compulsory for those mills that employed over 50 women to provide crèches. But in practice very few mill started crèches. As late as 1943, only 24 mills out of 66 mills had crèches in their premises. There was no retrenchment of women workers due to these law. But the effect of these laws was that it made the hiring of women workers more burdensome and more expensive than before. However, it is essential to stress that the social reasons for passing these laws were not only concern for the needs and problems of women, but primarily the needs of the production process for increased discipline and reduced turnover of labour. In 1922, night work for women was prohibited through an amendment of the Factory Act, 1911 . Though there was no immediate impact of this legislation, this restriction played a very important role in altering the pattern of women’s employment (Savara 1986).
The increasing competition faced by Mumbai’s textile mills in the late 1920s from Japanese mills in the export market forced the Mumbai mills to launch a process of rationalisation and greater productivity drives. Rationalisation occurred in the weaving, reeling and winding departments and the jobs of both men and women were affected. Cheese winding machines were introduced in Mumbai’s cotton textile mills in 1925, changing the winding process from one entailing some amount of hand labour to one using machines. Soon after this, more dramatic changes were introduced by the use of universal winding machines. The introduction of these machines simplified the winding and reeling process, compressing them into one. As these machines wound straight into the cheese or the beam, which could be dyed, reeling yarn into hanks for dyeing became unnecessary. Prime winding too was introduced at the same time, speeding up the winding process. The introduction of new machines made the work process simpler and more monotonous. A number of same actions had to be performed in the same amount of time as before and additionally the number of spindle under one woman’s supervision increased. (Kumar 1995: 25)
With the introduction of rationalisation, productivity increased and the existing labour force was no longer necessary. Around 5,100 workers we retrenched. Separate figures for women workers are not available. Workers began join trade unions hoping that the unions would be able to defend their jobs. The process of rationalisation did not make the process of production more complicated. The argument that women did not have the necessary skills to work on the new machines did not apply to the textile industry. In fact, the work process became simpler. The effect of rationalisation was to reduce the number of women required by the machines, not to displace women with men for reasons of different skill levels required. (Savara 1986: 35)
In 1928, there was a general strike in the textile industry over the issue of rationalisation and retrenchment. The strike ended after six months, with the government undertaking to set up a tripartite committee to investigate the issue. The committee, consisting of the government, the management and the trade union representatives, ultimately developed a formula for retrenchment and a recruitment policy that was acceptable to all parties. It was decided that those workers with shorter years of service in the industry would be the first to be retrenched with payment of gratuity dependent on the number of years of service a worker had put into the mill. (Government of India 1940: 208)
In 1935, the Bombay Mill Owners’ Association started the Badli (temporary) Control System. The system was devised with the purpose of giving regular, even though limited, employment, to badli or temporary workers. The badli labour schemes involved giving special badli cards to a selected number of workers who were assigned to different departments according to the requirements. The badli were asked to present themselves each morning to the mill where they were used to fill the temporary vacancies. Whenever a permanent vacancy arose in any occupation, the senior most badli worker would get the permanent worker’s post. The scheme thus ensured that workers who were retrenched would be the first to be re-employed. (Government of Maharashtra 1968: 44)
The badli labour schemes of the different mills were centralised in pool in 1950 with the starting of the Government Decasualisation Scheme. Labour recruitment into the industry thus became an insulated one.
In the 1930s, most mills began to run a night shift. Thus, there was ample opportunity for retrenched workers to get employment in the textile industry there was little opposition from the male workers to the formula developed by the committee. However, since women could not work in the night shift, there was no potential for the re-absorption of the excess female workforce. The only way of protecting the rights of the female workforce was by either breaking the existing gender division of labour or allowing women to work in the night shift. However, despite the fact that the process of rationalisation affected women equally, the issues regarding women’s employment were never take up. The trade unions failed to take up the cause of women workers primarily because of the lack of adequate representation of women in union activities.
Women resisted the reduction of employment in their ranks because there was little opportunity for them to get alternate employment in the organised sector. Women workers insisted they would share the available work among themselves. Thus, there was no immediate large-scale retrenchment of women workers. There was instead a slow and gradual decline in the female workforce. The mill owners followed a policy of very limited new recruitment of women. When women workers retired, women rarely filled up their vacancies. Thus, the decline represented the rate of retirement of women workers, who left the industry when they were too old to work anymore. The very limited recruitment of women workers since the 1930s, is reflected in the age of the women workers and by the fact that a far greater percentage of women worked a longer period in the industry. In 1940, 58 percent of the women had worked for less than 10 years but in 1955, only 14 percent of the women had worked under 10 years, indicating a fall in the new recruitment of women in the textile mills. (Savara 1956: 62)
The prohibition of worries from working in the night shift resulted in one-sided breakdown of the traditional division of labour on the basis of gender. While women rarely worked in departments other than winding, men began to be gradually employed in the winding department, which was earlier run exclusively by women workers. Since women worked in the first shift, men were recruited to work in the second and third shifts in the winding department. Gradually they also began to work in the first shift of the winding department.
Women Workers in National Textile Corporation (NTC) South Maharashtra (SM) Mills
The textile industry began to go through a period of recession from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Obsolete machinery and poor capacity utilisation hampered the performance of the mills. The textile policy and the reluctance of the mill owners to make investment deeply affected production. The competition faced from the powerlooms also affected the mill sector. The textile mills in Mumbai experienced a prolonged eighteen month strike. After the strike ended, a number of mills closed down. The mills, which reopened, decided to go in for rationalisation that resulted in reduction of the workforce. There were around 2, 50,000 textile mill workers in Mumbai till 1980. After the strike, the figures declined to 1, 23,000. After this the number continued to decline and in the year 2001 there were only 40,000 textile workers in Mumbai.
As a result of the growing recession in the textile industry, the government decided to take over a large number of textile mills. The National Textile Corporation, a public sector undertaking, was set up with the main objective of managing the affairs of the sick textile undertakings taken over by the government. It was formed under the provisions of the Sick Textile Undertakings (Nationalisation) Act of 1974. In 2004, NTC consisted of 119 mills under 9 subsidiaries and 1 holding company. However, by August 2006, only 5 mills have survived.
A case study was conducted by the author on the employment of women in textile mills falling under NTC (South Maharashtra ). In 2004, there were 18 operational mills under NTC (SM). Out of a total of l4,169 employees, there 13, 908 male employees and only 277 female employees. Female employees instituted a mere 1.95 percent of the working population (Table 2). At present, out of the 18 mills, nine mills have been shut down.
Table 2: Employment in National Textile Corporation (South Maharashtra)
Ltd. as on 30/09/2004
MILLS |
No. of Male employees |
No. of Female Employees |
Total |
Percentage of Women Employees |
Apollo |
892 |
16 |
908 |
1.76% |
Bharat |
893 |
6 |
899 |
0.67% |
Digvijay |
932 |
5 |
937 |
0.53% |
Jupiter |
788 |
17 |
805 |
2.11% |
Mumbai |
859 |
17 |
876 |
1.94% |
New Hind |
920 |
28 |
948 |
2.95% |
Aurangabad |
211 |
14 |
225 |
6.22% |
Barshi |
349 |
20 |
369 |
5.42% |
Chalisgaon |
957 |
9 |
966 |
0.93% |
Dhule |
853 |
19 |
872 |
2.18% |
Nanded |
652 |
18 |
670 |
2.69% |
Elephinstone |
753 |
15 |
768 |
1.95% |
Finlay |
1379 |
15 |
1394 |
1.08% |
Gold Mohur |
1085 |
1 |
1086 |
0.09% |
Madhusudan |
597 |
14 |
611 |
2.29% |
New City |
1194 |
36 |
1214 |
2.97% |
P. Process |
476 |
1 |
477 |
0.21% |
Corp. Office |
118 |
26 |
144 |
18.06% |
Total |
13908 |
277 |
14179 |
1.95% |
Source: NTC (SM), 2004.
As a preliminary to understanding the role of women in the textile environment, we need to look at the production process. The process is summarised as follows:
SPINNING DEPARTMENT
-Mixing (opening, cleaning, twisting)
polyester + cotton
polyester + viscose
- Conversion to sheet form
CARDING DEPARTMENT
-cleaning + spinning
- Yarn, as bobbins
PACKING DEPARTMENT
-packing
- For sale as Cone yarn
WINDING DEPARTMENT
-winding on cones
- Cone yarn
WEAVING DEPARTMENT
-warping
-sizing
-drawing in
-cloth production on looms
FOLDING DEPARTMENT
-folding
-checking
-packaging
The division of labour on the basis of gender in the mills is apparent even to a casual observer. An overwhelming majority of the women workers in the NTC (SM) mills (almost 80 percent) work in the winding department while the rest are employed in unskilled jobs as sweepers. There are no women managerial or supervisory positions. In the winding section, no woman worker has ever been promoted to the post of jobber or supervisor. Women workers who fall under the category of ‘staff and officers’ work as clerks or telephone operators.
As mentioned earlier, though there has been a breakdown of this traditional gender-based division of labour, it has been a completely one-sided one. While women rarely work in any department other than winding, men are now employed the winding section in large numbers. To begin with, the winding department was run exclusively by women. However, because of the prohibition of women workers from working in the night shift, men began to be employed in the winding departments to work in the other two shifts. Gradually male workers began to work in the first shift also. As a result, male workers are now in a majority even the winding section. In these mills, women constitute merely 32 percent of workforce in the winding section. Thus, while men have taken over areas traditionally associated with women workers, women are not employed in any other departments. The explanation given by managers and supervisors for the absence of women in other departments is that the work is too strenuous for women. However, a close observation of the production process shows that this explanation is not satisfactory. The work done by male workers in other sections of mill, for example, carding, weaving and folding sections, can be done by women also.
Women are now virtually non-existent in the textile mills of Mumbai. The decline in women’s employment has been gradual but steep. From constituting a quarter of the workforce, they now constitute a mere 1.1 percent. In comparison, women constitute 13 percent of the workforce in mills in Tamil, followed by Andhra Pradesh (11.40 percent), Madhya Pradesh (11.40 percent), Kerala (10.10 percent) and Karnataka (8.20 percent). (Kumar 1999)
Women Workers in the Powerloom Sector
The decentralised powerloom sector plays an important role in the production of cloth in India. It not only contributes significantly to cloth production in the country but also provides employment to millions of people. As per official estimates, 6.6 million people are employed in the power loom sector. However, Industry estimates put this figure at around 8 million.
The powerloom sector, a highly labour-intensive sector, employs women in very small numbers. A survey on the working and living conditions of workers in the powerloom sector was conducted in 1988 in 11 states on an all-India basis, by the Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour. In the first stage of sampling, 305 units and in the second stage, 410 units were covered.
Table 3: Proportion of Women Labour in Powerloom Industry
State |
Total no. of units covered |
% of units employing women workers |
Total no. of workers in the unit |
% of women workers |
% of women workers to total no. of women workers covered in the industry |
|||
Men |
Women |
Children |
All |
|||||
Andhra Pradesh |
10 |
40 |
67 |
16 |
7 |
90 |
17.8 |
9.47 |
Gujarat |
40 |
10 |
977 |
20 |
997 |
2.0 |
11.83 |
|
Haryana |
10 |
10 |
98 |
2 |
1 |
98 |
2.0 |
1.83 |
Karnataka |
20 |
30 |
197 |
16 |
197 |
8.1 |
9.47 |
|
Madhya Pradesh |
10 |
25 |
1 |
25 |
||||
Maharashtra |
120 |
2.5 |
782 |
3 |
782 |
0.4 |
1.78 |
|
Punjab |
10 |
10 |
210 |
13 |
13 |
223 |
5.8 |
7.69 |
Rajasthan |
10 |
103 |
103 |
|||||
Tamil Nadu |
45 |
62.2 |
358 |
86 |
13 |
457 |
18.8 |
50.89 |
Uttar Pradesh |
20 |
213 |
2 |
215 |
||||
West Bengal |
10 |
40 |
169 |
13 |
182 |
7.1 |
7.69 |
|
Total |
305 |
16.7 |
3176 |
169 |
24 |
3369 |
5.0 |
100.00 |
Source: Statistical Profile on Women Labour (Fourth Issue) 1993, Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour, Government of India.
Table 3 shows that there were a total number of 3,369 workers employed in the 305 sampled units. Of these, 169 were women. It shows that there only 5 women workers for every 100 male workers. In Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the employment of women workers in the powerloom industry was in comparison to other states on the higher side, that is, 18.8 and 17.8 percent respectively. Out of a total of 169 workers, 86 were from Tamil Nadu. In comparison, in Maharashtra the employment of women in the powerloom industry was the lowest at 0.2 percent, followed by Gujarat and Harayana at 2 percent. The maximum number of women were working as winders/twisters.
Table 4 : Average Daily Wage Rate of Time Rated Workers by Occupation Sex in Powerloom Industry.
S.No. |
Occupation |
Average daily earnings (including DA) – (Rs.) |
|||||||
Men |
Women |
Children |
All |
||||||
Min. |
Max. |
Min. |
Max. |
Min. |
Max. |
Min. |
Max. |
||
1 |
Weaver |
25.79 |
29.52 |
20.00 |
33.00 |
28.28 |
29.80 |
||
2 |
Winder (Robin/Pern/ Twister) |
17.91 |
19.00 |
14.21 |
14.21 |
8.71 |
9.13 |
16.39 |
17.52 |
3 |
Warper/ Folder/ Sizer |
29.92 |
30.33 |
29.92 |
30.33 |
||||
4 |
Dyer |
25.74 |
27.00 |
25.74 |
27.00 |
||||
5 |
Master/Jobber/Maistry/Designer |
37.70 |
41.37 |
37.70 |
41.37 |
||||
6 |
Folder/Finisher/Clipper |
26.29 |
28.21 |
26.29 |
28.21 |
||||
7 |
Helper/other Labourer/ Coolie/ Checker |
19.28 |
20.63 |
12.50 |
12.50 |
18.31 |
19.47 |
Source: Statistical Profile on Women Labour (Fourth Issue) 1993, Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour, Government of India.
Table 4 shows the occupation and gender-wise average daily wage rates of time rated workers. In the powerloom sector, women were working only as weavers, winder/twisters and helpers/coolie/packers. The average daily wage rates of women workers varied from a minimum of Rs 12.50 to a maximum of 33 at an all-India level, depending upon the occupations in which such workers were working. In most work processes, except weaving, women drew lower wages than men. Only in Tamil Nadu, women were drawing a higher wage in comparison to their male-counterparts in the same occupation.
Table 5: Average Daily earnings of Piece Rated workers by Occupation and Sex in Powerloom Industry
S.No. |
Occupation |
Average daily earnings (including DA) – (Rs.) |
|||||||
Men |
Women |
Children |
All |
||||||
Min. |
Max. |
Min. |
Max. |
Min. |
Max. |
Min. |
Max. |
||
1 |
Weaver |
29.64 |
42.70 |
14.54 |
16.91 |
29.49 |
42.45 |
||
2 |
Winder (Robin/Pern/ Twister) |
21.00 |
22.82 |
8.75 |
10.79 |
8.60 |
9.40 |
14.29 |
15.55 |
3 |
Warper/ Folder/ Sizer |
32.22 |
44.84 |
10.00 |
12.00 |
34.21 |
43.85 |
||
4 |
Dyer |
23.11 |
27.59 |
23.11 |
27.59 |
||||
5 |
Master/Jobber/Maistry/Designer |
26.29 |
32.22 |
26.29 |
32.22 |
||||
6 |
Folder/Finisher/Clipper |
23.25 |
23.25 |
23.25 |
23.25 |
||||
7 |
Helper/other Labourer/ Coolie/ Checker |
17.80 |
21.91 |
17.80 |
21.91 |
Source: Statistical Profile on Women Labour (Fourth Issue) 1993, Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour, Government of India.
Table 5 shows occupation and gender-wise average daily earnings of rated workers. Women were found working only in three occupations: (1) weaver (2) winder/finisher (3) warper/sizer and their daily earnings varied Rs 8.75 to Rs 16.91 per day at all-India levels.
Of the units where women workers were employed, the working hours in 20 percent of shifts varied from 8 to 12 hours. For women workers, spread over to 10 hours in about 55 percent of units. In rest of the units, spread over for women workers was even more than 10 hours to 14 hours in violation of various labour laws. (Labour Bureau 1993: 81)
Out of the total number of 305 units surveyed, women were employed in units. But only 5 units were observed to be providing maternity benefits under the Employee State Insurance Scheme. No unit was found providing benefits under the Maternity Benefits Act, 1961. (Labour Bureau 1993: 81)
Women Workers in Powerlooms of Bhiwandi
Bhiwandi, in Thane district of Maharashtra, is a major powerloorn centre in the country. Women are employed in very small numbers in Bhiwandi powerlooms. Here too, there is a clear division of labour on the basis of gender. Women workers in Bhiwandi work only in the mending/clipping section of the powerloom units. Once the grey cloth is produced, women are engaged in mending any defects in the cloth and clipping the superfluous threads. With the introduction of new machines, the quality of grey cloth produced is much better and very little mending work is required.
A case study conducted by the author in 2004 revealed that in all the units surveyed, women workers were mainly engaged in semi-skilled operation as clippers. There were a total number of 275 workers employed in the 5 unit surveyed. Out of these, 18 were women. Women workers formed 6.5 percent of the workforce in the sampled units. Since there were no muster rolls in these units and no employee records were maintained, it was difficult to get information about the workers. In all the units in the sample, workers were hired by a contractor who paid them their wages. A majority of women workers lived in Bhiwandi, while a small minority came from Thane city. The working conditions in the powerloom units were terrible. In all the units, women worked in cramped conditions, with poor lighting and no ventilation. Since the sheds in which they worked were covered with tin roofs, it became unbearably hot in the summer. Most women complained of spells of nausea, dizziness and headache. There were no separate toilet facilities for women in the units. The only toilets provided by the units were makeshift kutcha ones. Most women avoided using these common toilets. In fact, some women preferred to walk back home (which could be a one hour walk back and forth) to use the toilet. If they were absent for even an hour, their wage was deducted.
All the women workers in the sampled units were paid on a time-rate basis. While 58 percent of the women were paid on a monthly basis, the remaining 42 percent were paid on a weekly basis. The women worked for 8 hours every day and were on an average paid Rs 45 per day. Their wages fell on the lower end of the spectrum primarily because of the division of labour on the basis of gender. Women were confined to the lowest paying jobs.
The workers in Bhiwandi’s powerlooms do not enjoy the benefits of any paid leave, weekly off, dearness allowance, provident fund, medical assistant under the Employee State Insurance Scheme or maternity Benefits. If any monetary assistance is provided by the owner in case of an illness, it is duly deducted with interest from their salary. There is no job security for these women orking in the powerlooms. The fear of losing their jobs is constant. Even women who have been working for more than 10 years in the same unit do not feel their jobs are secure.
A survey was conducted on the social and economic conditions of powerloom workers of Bhiwandi in 1997 by the Maharashtra Institute of Labour Studies. The sample constituted a total number of 50 units and 250 workers. The survey showed that women worked as semi-skilled workers in the clipping departments of powerlooms. They constituted a mere 3.87 percent of the total workforce.
An analysis of women workers in the textile industry, a highly labour intensive industry, shows that women are employed in very small numbers throughout the industry. Both in the mills of Mumbai and in the powerlooms of Bhiwandi, women constitute a negligible percentage of the working population. The prevalence of gender-based division of labour is also seen throughout the industry, both in the organised and unorganised sectors. Women workers are generally confined to the winding/mending sections. They are generally concentrated in the lowest paying jobs. A study of this industry should lead us to ink the impact of affirmative action on the employment of women. The prohibition of night work for women in factories has played a very important role in changing the nature of women’s employment in the textile industry and directly contributed to their dwindling numbers.
In order to improve the status of women workers in the textile industry, there is also a need to launch intensive skill upgradation programmes to enable to seek employment in more skilled and better paying jobs, particularly since the industry is going through a period of acute recession. In the unorganised powerloom sector, they enjoy none of the social security benefits legally due to them and all labour laws are openly flouted. As per the 1991 Census data, 96 percent of women workers are employed in the unorganised sector, where they work under extremely exploitative conditions. Though India has a large number of laws, the outlook tends to be paternalistic, While provisions of a number of acts need to be amended in order to make them more gender sensitive, the enforcement of these acts also needs to be stepped up, particularly in the organised sector.
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Contributor:
ANU SAKSENA. Received her doctorate from the University of Mumbai. Has worked as Post Doctoral Fellow in the University of Mumbai. Was a Lecturer in Political Science at the Department of Post Graduate Studies and Research, S.N.D.T. University, Mumbai and is presently as freelance writer. Saksena has auhtored two books and written several articles.