“Growing up in a mining area”

This chapter discusses the major and contemporary gendered transition of Meghalaya from a women-centred economy to a masculinised occupational culture dominated by mining, and how this transition has reduced the status of the indigenous tribal women in Meghalaya. In doing so, it maps these gendered socio-economic, cultural, and political transitions that women in this matrilineal society have witnessed across generations and how their experiences of changing ideas of labour, leisure, and mobility reveals the changing content of their status and worldview throughout their lives in a broader sense.