Assessing the socio-economic status and self reported position on sexual violence among domestic workers in Delhi NCR: an exploratory study
Student name: Ms Varuna Chauhan
Guide: Dr Prashant Kumar Singh
Year of completion: 2017
Host Organisation: Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), New Delhi
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Ms Nandita Bhatt
Abstract: Rapid urbanization is changing the relative roles and responsibilities of both
men and women with more women entering the formal job sector. This has led to
transferring of social reproductive roles of women to the domestic workers. In
this way the domestic workers support the economic growth indirectly and they
in turn become an integral part of the family. This demand for domestic workers
attract huge number from different places. A majority of them are women from
the marginalised section of the society. But the domestic work gets undervalued
due to gender discrimination and the belief that no skill sets are required for the
work.
In this paper through an exploratory study we try to assess the socio economic
status and self reported position on violence by domestic workers in Delhi,
Gurgaon and Faridabad. The first section of the paper highlights the journey of
the domestic workers from the place of origin to the final destination. It talks
about the push and pull factors that lead to migration of women and the reason
for working as domestic worker. The second section talks double burden of
violence the women face which does not get highlighted due to the invisible
nature of work and the patriarchal society in India which considers women last
in line.
The paper shows that often women migrate from distant places to fulfill the
economic desires of their family. For most women it is a matter of choice to work
as domestic workers. There is huge discrepancies in the earnings of domestic
workers in Gurgaon which is much higher than that of their counterparts in
Delhi and Faridabad. This is because there is no standardization of wages and
the wage rate depends on the negotiation and bargaining power of the domestic
workers which was found to be weak in Delhi and Faridabad. The Government
has also not enacted any law in this regard. There was no self reported sexual
violence by the domestic workers but the instances of domestic violence was high
in the district of Faridabad.
Keywords: Domestic Work, Urbanization, Gender Discrimination, Violence,
Delhi NCR.
