The Lace Makers of Narsapur (Spinifex Feminist Classics)
Language: English
Pages: 222
ISBN: 1742198147
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A sensitive and groundbreaking study of women, this examination of globalization in India provides a fascinating case study of its effects on female workers in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Originally published in 1982, the book is an important insight into a group dispossessed before the recent economic boom in India. It details the way in which women have been used to produce luxury goods for the Western market while they are not counted as workers or producers in their fragmented workplaces. Instead, these women are defined as nonworking housewives and their work as leisure activity. With rates of pay far below acceptable levels, pauperization is accelerated and their position in Indian society rapidly deteriorates. An invaluable analysis with implications on the global stage, the case of the lace makers continues to instruct on the real impact of industrial development.
in Sitarampuram. Practically all the merchants and merchant-agents are men. There are only very few women who had been agents and who have succeeded in becoming merchants or traders. But, contrary to 14 The difference in wages is due to the fact that a strike in the thread factory was called off and thus raw material was available again. There was a great rush from the exporters to get lace made. 77 Lacemakers_ch05.indd 77 13/03/12 6:14 PM The Lace Makers of Narsapur the men, these women are
latrines by the people around. Two hundred metres up the canal there was a wall along a lane. About 10 traders had occupied the first part of the wall, nearest the main road. They had spread out their lace goods on mats made of coconut leaves and they were waiting for customers. One of them told us that he and his sons collect lace from the surrounding villages on bicycles and sell it here. They were Kapus. The trader we had met on the bus was obviously the biggest and most aggressive among them.
No. of Families Gold 13 14 Silver – – 14 15 7 8 Gold, silver, utensils 20 22 Gold, silver, utensils, land 16 17 Do not know 31 34 100 110 Utensils Land Indebted families This table reveals that in most of the 110 indebted families, the women had pawned and lost their own belongings. There were only eight families where only land had been lost. Moreover, this table also indicates that pauperisation is a dynamic process. Not only one item is pawned or mortgaged; in the
their own work as well as by selling or pawning their belongings. As housewives and mothers who are held responsible for the regular sustenance of the family, they get pauperised faster than the men in this process. In spite of the fact that the men earn more, the women’s income is all spent on the family, whereas men can either invest some of their income or spend it on their own recreation. Perhaps it would be more correct to call the women the regular breadwinners of their families and not the
also be observed in traditional agricultural occupations and household industries. The percentage of women employed as cultivators declined between 1961 and 1971 from 30.02 per cent to 7.13 per cent, that of agricultural labourers from 12.60 per cent to 11.80 per cent and of women engaged in household industries from 3.42 per cent to 0.77 per cent.4 Whereas until 1961 the proportion of women among cultivators had been between 289–498 per 1,000 men, this ratio fell steeply between 1961 and 1971 to