Secret Freedom in the City: Women's Wage Work and Agency in CalcuttaExamines the impact of women's wage work in a working class neighborhood in Calcutta, addressing the question of agency of women workers who are not formally organized to bargain their terms of work and whose work largely goes unacknowledged. Shows how women integrate wage work and their earnings into the broad domain of Bengale household and how women's domain becomes a site for developing ideas of freedom and critique of dominant discourses. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | 1 |
One Encountering Kalipara | 15 |
Two The Allure of Calcutta | 39 |
Copyright | |
1 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
able agency arranged Banerjee Bangladesh bargain their terms basti bhadralok Brahmin breadwinner Calcutta census Chart class women considered cooking cultural categories culturally constructed daughter dominant discourses Durga Puja earn economic activities endogamy factory workers freedom Fruzzetti gendered girls give hair bands hierarchy high caste Hindu household chores household economy housewife housewives husband idea in-laws India intercaste marriages interviews Jāti joint family Kali Puja Kayastha kinship Laksmi living machine sewing maids manage married women meaning men's middle class mother mud house neighborhood neighbors Östör parents participation payment pūjā Ramakrishna Mission relationships rice ricksha driver rural samsār sāris scheduled caste secret resistance sewing at home share social spend status studies Subaltern Studies symbolic University of Helsinki unmarried unofficial sector urban village West Bengal white collar widows wife wife's wives women in Kalipara women workers women's sphere women's wage