Swagata BASU, SSV College Hapur, India, India
Women in rural India are engaged in household chores and supportive activities like producing goods and services that are lowest skilled and lowest paid located within the household (Jain, 1985). While women’s home-based production activities have been well documented, the same is not true for women engaged in similar activities in the rural hinterland of the cities. Often women’s work and supportive role in augmenting family income are misrepresented as a leisure activity by themselves and their families, rendering such labour ‘invisible, unrecognized, and undervalued’. (Nilsson et al., 2022). In this paper, women’s contribution to household income through home-based work in the rural hinterland of Hapur city in North India has been documented where women are propelled into engaging in handcrafted jewellery making and other peripheral chores linked to the handloom sector as a part of the household tradition and deepening financial precarity of their families. Their contribution is characterized by self-abnegation and self-effacement, which marks a major obstacle towards visibilizing, recognizing and documenting their contribution to labour markets.
Mots clés : Handcrafted products, Home-based Work, Invisible work, Leisure, Low skilled work, Low paid work
UGI202220