Crafting work and workspaces: A qualitative study of the meaning of work for women in the weaving sector in Kashmir

Abstract

Prior research has discussed a number of barriers that hinder Indian women’s participation in the workforce, especially outside their homes. We build on this research to explore how women use their agency to creatively negotiate with these barriers to access workplaces outside their home, as well as the non-wage benefits and meaning they associate with it. We use a qualitative methodology, privileging the voices of women workers themselves, to understand how women artisans from low-income households in Kashmir navigated structural barriers such as demands of respectability, unpaid care work and restricted mobility, to make work choices. We found that women used a specific set of resources rooted in space and time to access paid work at weaving centers outside their home. In addition, they exercised agency in remaking the workplace such that it had the right ‘mahaul’ (environment) which conformed with ideals of feminine modesty and respectability; and crafted ‘in-between’ workplaces that blended aspects of both the ‘home’ and the ‘outside’, consistent with their need for flexibility and mobility restrictions. Our study revealed that these ‘in-between’ workplaces, in turn, provided a ‘sanctuary’ like space for women weavers, which not only helped them to overcome financial precarity, but also, emotional precarity. These findings contribute to the literature on women and paid work in India by challenging the binary of ‘home-based’ and ‘outside’ to make room for novel articulations about ‘in-between’ spaces of work; and by emphasising the benefits of locational embeddedness and an ‘occupational community’ in the context of immobility in Kashmir.