Caste, gender, and labour: A case study of dalit women domestic workers

Abstract

The broader aim of the paper is to analyse the lived experiences of the dalit women viz a viz the work they perform with the purpose to deconstruct these structures of oppression and humiliation which shape their idea of the self. The nature of work, its demand and relationship with labour has further undergone some overt changes during the pandemic. The paper seeks to understand the oppression dalit women face in the labour that they perform and how the pandemic has re-shaped/revised the kind of struggles women at the intersection of caste and gender face. makes the power producing knowledge systems explicit consequently shifting the pivot of the problem from the body of the dalit woman to that of systems which produce and reproduce such hierarchical identities. Such an approach helps to deconstruct the forms of coping mechanisms adopted by them to deal with this oppression induced by caste and gender and aggravated by the pandemic.