ABSTRACT
Women arrive in the Calcutta labour force through a variety of different circumstances and in response to a range of needs which are partly defined by the class position of the family and partly by other social and cultural parameters. Women of West Bengal middle-class origins are least likely to be in waged employment and they display the most restricted occupational profile. Refugee-originated women have taken employment in a wide range of unorganized sector jobs such as small-scale factory assembly work, food processing and tailoring. With the exception of eight women living in residential quarters who have been designated as separate households, all the women live in family-based households, the majority of which contain at least one married couple or once married member. Few married women set up home separately from their in-laws in the beginning but couples may move away subsequently if they are able to find and afford rented accommodation.
