1Keeping up with the growing academic interest that paid domestic work has received in recent years, this book draws on 14 essays highlighting paid domestic work and everyday challenges of Indian domestic workers. The introductory chapter by Neetha N. serves as an overview to what follows in the rest of the essays, and discusses domestic work through the lens of gender, caste, religion, class, region and the role these distinctions play in shaping domestic workers lives in everyday India. While diverse, the essays in the book can be largely divided amongst the following four themes – the gendered identity of domestic work, conditions of work and wages, unionization and collective action, and policy and legislative efforts made for domestic workers. The empirical foundations of the book are based on ethnographies and interviews conducted with domestic workers, employers, and domestic workers organisations.
2While gendered makings of domestic work categorizing it as “natural work” to women, reflects in all the essays in the book, Basu’s essay on women in care work highlights specifically how female domestic workers in a developing city of Siliguri in West Bengal classify themselves as “secondary income earners” in their household, not realizing that their work and contribution is real and productive. Interestingly, Basu finds that ultimately these workers do manage to exercise sufficient control over their labour power and secure decent terms of service through their use of individual and collective agency. Following up on this discussion, Wadhwa’s essay details how power structures of caste, religion, region and kinship operating within the homes of women domestic workers have constraining effects but through them are created strategies of survival and growth.
3Coelho’s essay embarks on the theme of conditions of work and wages of domestic workers. Exploring how a resettlement colony in the Indian metropolitan city of Chennai thrives on a cheap and casual and unprotected labour force, mainly due to an abundant supply of unskilled and low-skilled labour, Coelho pushes for recognizing domestic work as decent work needing better regulations and improved work conditions. In the same lines, Sengupta and Sen’s essay revolves around the construction, negotiation, variation and individual and collective bargaining around wages for part-time female domestic workers in the south of the city of Kolkata. Three main ideas form the basis in this essay: complexity and difficulties in standardizing wages; the reasons for the same and bargaining and collective action specifically in the light of the emergence of a legislation in India. A third example within the same framework is Jain and Kodoth’s essay discussing constraints of part-time domestic workers in bargaining for better wages and conditions of work in the National Capital Region (NCR). The main argument is, that although locality – specific norms in NCR are not definitive –, they provide domestic workers with a sense into the formality of work and ability to bargain, but also hamper negotiation and bargaining power due to it predominantly being in favour of the employers. The key discussions revolving around wage norms and efforts made by Residents Welfare Associations which formalize these relations while threatening domestic workers individual bargaining space, prove to be a fascinating contribution in this essay.
4Unionisation and collective action formed another important contribution in this book. Moghe’s work on organising domestic workers in the city of Pune is a discussion on collective action struggles and achievements by the organisations AIDWA and the later founded PDDWU. Through the lens of these organisations, Moghe outlines the existing realities of domestic work in Pune and the importance of collective action especially given the failure of the state to implement any effective welfare measure for domestic workers. She highlights this by stating, “it is the strategy of the neoliberal state to create a semblance of a benefit without actually providing anything substantive”. In the similar spirit, George’s essay on the professionalisation of domestic work highlights the efforts taken by the organisation SEWA, in Kerala, to empower domestic work through the provision of skills training, promotion of improved conditions of work, and arguing for their rights. Initiations by SEWA and its workers collectively have brought several legislative changes in Kerala and is encouraging the national government to push for the passing of the national policy.
5Touching upon the theme of policy and legislative efforts, Rustagi and Satija’s essay does not just analyse the lack of effective legislations in India for better conditions of work especially for child and adolescent domestic workers, but also details on effective policy changes and pushes for enhanced implementation of existing policies, to curb existing gaps. In continuation, Nimushakavi’s essay denotes the distinct nature of domestic work and the need to have a legal framework to address their needs. She argues for right-based and liberal interpretations to the already existing labour legislations that are still coloured in colonial spirit and are interpreted in a way that disadvantages informal sector workers. Neetha N.’s essay argues how state attempts have continued to mirror devalued housework of domestic workers by excluding them from labour law legislations. The essay discusses the minimum wages set in five states of India to determine the problems with these laws and the need for changes. She finds that lack of political will, less importance to effective administration and administrative denial of violation of laws have discouraged respectable working conditions for domestic workers. In continuation of this discussion, Sankaran’s essay denotes several factors such as rights of women within the family, unpaid labour, and fixation of minimum wages, that affect wage rates of domestic work in India today. This last chapter highlights the problem of undervaluation of housework specifically in different branches of law, making a case to quantify domestic work.
6Two essays that could easily form a part of the above themes but still stand out due to elements of distinctness are Kodoth’s and Sharma’s works. Kodoth details the life of Indians migrating to the middle east to work as domestic workers, their struggles in navigating through the laws and often times the informality that comes with it. Showcasing how Indian female domestic workers negotiate in the labour market in the Middle East, the author questions the effectiveness of the Kafala system, it’s misuse by the employer and the employee, which results in rampant informality and negotiation of work conditions. She concludes that informality provides better compensation and more freedom, but only if workers are able to manage the risks that come with it. Sharma in his essay takes a micro-level perspective discussing the lives of domestic workers in the private realms of their employer’s workplace. He explores how domestic workers negotiate class inequalities in middle-class homes highlighting the existence of class-imagery between these employer-employee relationships. The essay highlights the issue of reproduction of class stratification that is underlined through the prevalence of constant anxiety that employers have towards misplacing their valuables through the hands of the “stranger” domestic workers. This stratification is further practised through developing spatial practices within homes – to secure belongings and valuables maintaining the boundaries of classes. Domestic workers are paradoxically portrayed as criminals when valuables go missing, and on the other hand as members of the family when it comes to getting the housework done well.
7Overall, the book successfully delivers its objective of highlighting the specificities and challenges of paid domestic work in India, but I ask myself if supplementing this discussion with more insights into employer’s perspectives on domestic work and workers could have benefitted the book? Some added discussion highlighting desirable course of action as solution to the challenges of paid domestic work would have also been an apt conclusion to this volume. With its in-depth discussion mainly centred around gendered identity classification, and devaluation of this type of work, the book is a significant contribution to the literature on domestic work, labour welfare, and gender studies. Given that the book is a collection of essays, some arguments may seem superfluous, but this is well compensated by the diversity of themes studied, making it an interesting read.
8The book deems relevant to sociologists, anthropologists, and other scholars interested in labour welfare and gender studies. Working at Others’ Homes is a befitting title to highlight that paid domestic work continues to be categorized as an extension of housework and thus remains unaccounted for and undervalued.
