Empowerment or Exploitation? A Micro-Historical Study of Women Bidi Workers in Murshidabad District (1990–2020)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31305/rrjss.2024.v04.n01.009Keywords:
Bidi industry, Women workers, Informal labour, Micro-history, Empowerment, Exploitation, Murshidabad, Gender inequalityAbstract
Using a micro-historical approach, this study looks at the complicated realities of women bidi labourers in the Murshidabad area of West Bengal from 1990 to 2020. The purpose of this analysis is to determine if their involvement in the bidi sector gives them agency or if it just perpetuates their exploitation in the shadow economy. Decentralized, home-based production systems have increasingly depended on female workers owing to their socio-economic fragility and restricted mobility, as highlighted by the research, which situates women’s labour within the broader historical growth of the bidi sector. The study shows that low earnings, insecurity in employment, lack of social protection, and substantial health risks impact women’s engagement in bidi work, which is a vital source of revenue and helps them contribute to household survival. This study shows how women navigate fundamentally unequal systems, exert limited agency, and deal with everyday situations by concentrating on local contexts and ordinary experiences. It contends that bidi workers’ lives are complex and contradictory, and that empowerment and exploitation do not exist in isolation from one another. The results indicate that women need institutional protections, fair salaries, and better working conditions to ensure that their economic engagement alone will lead to meaningful empowerment. The study sheds light on the gendered dynamics of work and survival tactics in modern rural India, adding depth to our knowledge of informal labour by connecting theoretical frameworks with participants’ day-to-day experiences.
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