Page 1 of 14
Journal for Studies in Management and Planning
Available at
http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/
e-ISSN: 2395-0463
Volume 02 Issue 9
September 2016
Available online: http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/ P a g e | 216
Work Conditions of Women Workers in Unorganised Sector:
A Review of Literature
Kulwant Singh & Prof. Rajender Gupta
1Research Scholar, Department Of Economics, University Of Jammu.
2Professor of economics, Department of Economics, University of Jammu.
Email: kulwantsjmu2@yahoo.com
Abstract
This paper is based on review of a wide range
of literature available on work conditions of
women workers in unorganized sector.
Women constitute the largest segment of
India’s unorganised work force, but women’s
work most of the time goes unrecognized and
benefits hardly reach them. Gender
discrimination is a common practice; women
workers suffer vital disadvantages
comparative to men in their search for
employment opportunities, lower real wages,
increased uncertainties and irregularities of
employment. They do not possess much of
skill, training and education for the type of
work they perform. Thus, women in the
unorganized sector are oppressed sections of
the society as they live under subdued
conditions with family and children, devoid of
proper living and working conditions. Many
laws have been provided to ensure a safe and
healthy working environment for the female
worker, but most them are practiced in
breach rather than in compliance. Present
paper is an attempt to analyse the plight of
these workers through survey of literature on
the subject.
Key words: Unorganised sector, gender
discrimination, double burden of work, work
conditions, social security.
Introduction
Women constitute the largest segment of
India’s unorganised workforce. According to
National council for Applied Economic
Research (NCAER), almost 97 percent female
workers are involved in the unorganised or
informal sector1
. They are from the poorest
rural households and very often from
scheduled, backward or tribal castes.
Women’s work most of the time goes
unrecognized and the benefits hardly reach
them. They enter into the labour market only
when the economic compulsions force them
to supplement the meager family earnings.
The concept to work as a supplementing or
balancing force in the family has made them
susceptible to all sorts of discriminatory
treatment and exploitation (physically,
economically and socially) in the field of
employment.
Page 2 of 14
Journal for Studies in Management and Planning
Available at
http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/
e-ISSN: 2395-0463
Volume 02 Issue 9
September 2016
Available online: http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/ P a g e | 217
At the root of all malaise that women
suffer in employment is mainly due to the
absence or poor quality of education that they
get in Indian society. Indian history reveals
that so long as women are equally educated,
they had equal rights. Gradually they were
withdrawn from education and thereafter they
became second grade citizen. Thus, for
thousands of years, women have been made
silent and invisible not only by pressure
against them playing any role outside the
home but also by lack of education. Education
is essential in the process of women gaining
confidence, self-esteem and the skills to equip
them in the struggle for equal right. A brief
generalized account of the conditions f
women workers is being given below.
Methodology
Study is based on survey of literature
available on the subject
Double Burden of Work
The problems of the women in the
unorganized sector in particular deserve
special emphasis because of their
marginalized position within the class of
workers. The double burden of work is even
more arduous when they have to perform a
reproductive role at home front as well as
long hours to obtain a subsistence wage at the
center of employment. A reproductive role of
women is less visible and less recognized by
the society. They engage in multiple
livelihood activities to fulfill their productive
and reproductive role, the CSO (1998)2
of the
Government of India provided official
visibility to this double burden of work
through a pilot study of utilization of time by
men and women in six states according to
which women spend nearly 35 hours a week
on care of children, old and the sick at home
and household maintenance compared to less
than four hours spent by men. George3
(1990)
found in case of women beedi workers that a
woman is associated with her house is
expected to look after domestic chores and
her typical riles are those a housewife and a
mother. Lack of education, ignorance and
poverty compel the women from this class to
accept whatever unskilled job is available on
whatever wage the employer whishes to pay.
Gender Discrimination
Gender discrimination at the work place is
subtle and is reflected in the nature of work
performed, valuation of the skills and the
technology used by men and women.
Generally lower wage rate jobs are assigned
to women and the higher wage rate jobs are
assigned to men.
Page 3 of 14
Journal for Studies in Management and Planning
Available at
http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/
e-ISSN: 2395-0463
Volume 02 Issue 9
September 2016
Available online: http://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/JSMaP/ P a g e | 218
According to Jawahar Lal Singh4
(2002),
women workers suffer vital disadvantages
comparative to men in their search for
employment opportunities, lower real wages,
increased uncertainties and irregularities of
employment. They do not possess much of
skill, training and education for the type of
work they perform. Thus, women in the
unorganised sector are oppressed sections of
the society as they live under subdued
conditions with family and children, devoid of
proper living and working conditions, even
they receive humiliating treatment from the
contractor.
In a study of the garment industry in
Tiruppur, Vijayabhaskar5
(2002) noted that
women workers in Tirippur were
concentrated in the lowest paid category of
workers receiving substantially lower wages
than men. Women were concentrated in
embroidery, cleaning, finishing, tagging and
packaging. Most recently, women are
entering into stitching in large numbers.
There is a clear sexual division of labour and
with the introduction of machines this had
further been augmented and facilitated. The
fashion masters are the most skilled and this
category is exclusively reserved for make
workers. Machine attendants carry out the
actual process of knitting, control, adjust and
monitor units and their chance of moving
from helpers. Female worker are mostly
helpers in these units and the chance of
moving from helpers to attendants is nil,
while the male works are able to make this
vertical movement. This very clear sexual
division of labour has implications for the
wages earned, permanency in the job and the
possibilities for upward mobility in the
industry. Neetha6
(2002) also observed that
women receive lower wages and have
limited job mobility in the hierarchy of the
knitwear industry.
Rao and Hussain7
(1997) also
observed sexual division of labour in garment
export industry in Delhi where the hierarchy
was such that men were the supervisors since
men tailors ‘do not like orders from women’.
In the supervisory category usually women
supervised only women, men tended to be
placed in all the critical skilled jobs and were
consequently paid higher wages. Hand
embroidery done by women was the most
skilled and time intensive, but pays the lowest
wages, i.e., women’s skills were
systematically undervalued. Studies have
brought out that women also did the most
monotonous jobs, such as, checking, button
stitching and thread cutting, the drudgery was
greater and the wages were lower.
Occupational Profile
