ABSTRACT
The single most essential indicator of gender equality is the extent to which women participate in the labour market, India recording amongst the lowest levels. Fundamental therefore is to examine the connects and disconnects within the gendered work continuum incorporating all the myriad forms of labour that a woman is compelled to exercise: paid, underpaid, unpaid, and unpaid care. This evidence-based analysis in the periphery of Mumbai/Bombay focuses on the lived reality of construction workers and is based on household surveys conducted in 2016–2017. The conceptual structure incorporates constraints that unpaid work and time poverty impose, and examines the specific impact of major macroeconomic policies on unpaid as well as paid work including those relating to demonetisation, withdrawal of subsidies, public provisioning, cooking energy, and childcare. Of special focus are the labour nakas (space where workers gather to sell their labour-power) that have emerged since the process of neo-liberalism.
