A woman who was dressed in police clothes manages the crowd of a busy train station, a sight that would have escaped our attention if it hadn’t been the one -year -old who weighed in her hands. This photo of Reena, an RPF police officer, has become viral last month. It is typical of the hand that rocks the cradle and rules the word – in the Language of the railway police specialist – “It serves, it promotes, it does everything.”
It is typical of the hand that rocks the cradle and rules the word – in the Language of the railway police specialist – “It serves, it promotes, it does everything.”
In the past few months, the questions of women’s work and their work area have arisen about the hideous rape and murder of a training doctor in a renowned hospital in Kalkutta. A first -class demand for the movement was the security of women in the work area to create a work area that promotes the needs of women and gender -specific queer people more beneficial.
Laws that rule the work of women
Since the time of independence, there have been a variety of laws that tried to protect women in their work areas. The Fabrics Act from 1948 Mandates that workers have to be supplied with separate toilets, changing rooms and lockers with a crib and an obligatory care breaks.
Source: Fii
The Maternity Usage Act of 1961 offers female employees up to twenty -six weeks of maternity leave with the guarantee of preventing the termination of their jobs during this period or the negative changes in their employment conditions. The same remuneration law of 1976 provides for the same payment of men and women for the same work and prohibits the discrimination against female workers in relation to recruitment, promotion and general employment conditions.
Finally, the sexual harassment of women in the workplace (prevention, prohibition and remuneration) promises to protect women from sexual harassment of all kinds for which the employer is absolutely necessary to set up an internal complaint committee in order to ensure that such complaints are quickly and confidential.
Despite such robust laws, why is such a danger for women and gender -specific queer workers worked?
Despite such robust laws, why is such a danger for women and gender -specific queer workers worked? An obvious explanation is to put this on implementation gaps. In 2023 the Supreme Court of India Considered concerns About the serious errors in the implementation of the POSH law including non-compliance. But to understand the obstacles with which women are faced with work, we may have to step back and ask what makes women and work in the context of India.
At home as a work area
After Periodic employment survey (2021-22) The participation of workers in India was 32.8%. Despite the registration of an increase compared to the past round of 23.3%, the image is demolished in the employment population, particularly in comparison to 77.2%.
Source: Fii
According to the same report, 44.5% childcare and household quotes as the main reason for the spread of paid workers. It is therefore clear that what “does not work” in national levels actually represents a large part of the work of women. Based on the Time use survey at NSSO 2019 It can be seen that 85% girls and women between 15 and 92% spend women between 29 and 59 over five hours for unpaid homework in contrast to 24.5% of men and boys about more than more than more than more than more than an hour for domestic tasks.
In view of this great care burden that women wear as work, their home often serves as a primary construction site. As we know, this house is hardly a safe work area. Together with unequal working conditions, which are obvious in the enormous inequality in the distribution of unpaid domestic and careful work, women are also susceptible to violence in their home. A very quick look at self -reported cases of domestic violence Show That 29.3% of women between the ages of 18 and 49 are exposed to domestic and/or sexual violence. Experts who work on violence issues agree that even this number is strong understated.
The house as a space of unpaid nursing work is not recognized as a work area. But even as a place of domestic work, the house escapes from the legislation of laws that laid the employment of women in India. Jayati Ghosh finds that the employment of women in export -oriented production in the nineties corresponds to an increase in the independence of women. This increase in regular work by what is recognized for the measurement as “side activity” can be seen as part of the sub-control system for export and domestic markets when increasing the house-based work.
According to PLSF report (2023-24), 36.7% women operate unpaid work within the household company.
According to PLSF report (2023-24), 36.7% women operate unpaid work within the household company. For many who work at Bidi, Zari and other such work at home, the risk of the profession is specific. Low payment and difficult working conditions overlap with exploitation by subcontractors. As feminized work of individual women or women in a household in their houses, this work hardly gets our attention and often escape the protection of the state.
Informal work and lack of protection
Next we come to the section of the employees who make up the reporting of 32.8% in order to be in paid work. 81.8% of women in paid work, workers in the informal sector, including housework, street sales, domestic work and the like (such ()Ilo, 2018). The employment of one of the largest segments of women, especially poor women with migrants, is still one of the least regulated sectors in postcolonial India.
Source: Fii
As a feminized sector, which usually employs individual workers, it also falls outside the preventive of most working laws that regulate the protection of women in India. Cathedral artists complain about exploitative working conditions, in competence wages and various humiliating behaviors to which they are faced in the houses of their employers, including refusal of access to toilets. They report on regular oral abuse and often extremely Physical and sexual abuse.
While the 2013 POSH Act has provisions that enable employees in private houses to submit complaints against their perpetrators, it must be remembered that the domestic service is contoured to acute boxes and class differences. Poor women, usually migrants, often low caste, lack both knowledge and the support structure, which is necessary to pursue such an appeal mechanism.
Indeed, government Report Suggest that between 2015 and 2021 rape of Dalit women and girls has increased by 45%, which shows, as the employment conditions, which are characterized by unequal relationship relationships of the caste, lead to both different forms of violence and an obstruction of the authority. This is further anchored by inadequate union or collectivization in this sector.
Women who work on the street remain disadvantaged. The road is rarely recognized as a work space.
Women who work on the street remain disadvantaged. The road is rarely recognized as a work space. Road sellers regularly experience various forms of abuses, which are exposed to violent evacuations to attacks by the police, the strong men on site and broad public apathy over their emergency. While the government passed road sales (protection of livelihood and regulation of road sales) in 2014, there was hardly a real difference in life and livelihood for workers.
Despite the recognition of sex work as a profession, this decision is characterized by many reservations, including the continuation of the criminalization of trade as an organized trade. The judicial statement is not more important to change working conditions on the streets.
Source: Fii
In sectors such as production or plantations in which the work areas were under the Labor laws remains Persistent wage discrimination and bias against employees. Umby to deal with the same work for the same work, women are pushed into low -end workstations in low -suitable jobs, which are referred to as wages and precarity for them.
No work without security
A report Indiaspend suggests that a lack of security in the workplace determines the decision of many women not to take on paid work. While we celebrate the double role, the Reena distributes in its double stress, which constantly sweep the infrastructural laps under the carpet that create such conditions of critical workers, women are routinely exploited, attacked and killed in their work area.
From Bhanwari Devis Gangrape in 1992 to the RG -KAR rape and the murder in 2024, the contours, by violence, influenced the work of women, while it is clearly marked by her caste, class and community location, was terrible in its consistency. And it is time that we pay attention to it.
