If labour history earlier tended to ignore women workers on the one hand[2] and Third World workers on the other,[3] the point where these two streams of ignorance converged was the history of trade union organisation among Third World women workers. More recently, there has been a growing body of literature on ways in which women workers in the Third World have organised themselves in order to struggle for basic rights;[4] however, compared with the total volume of literature on trade unionism, this still remains a very small proportion.
This paper is a contribution to redressing the balance by providing an account of the struggle of women workers in the pharmaceutical industry in Bombay against the marriage bar – a struggle which made history by challenging norms which had hitherto been taken for granted. Demands for equal pay, maternity leave and workplace creches were also fought and won. However the outcome, paradoxically, was declining employment for women in the organised sector[5] of this industry: the consequence of a complex interaction between employers and unions where each learned from the other and from their own successes and failures.
A woman unionist, comparing her gross pay of 8084 rupees per month in 1994 with a mere 84 rupees in 1960, could still look back and say, ‘Those were the lovely days!’[6] And indeed, looking at old photographs of crowds of young women shouting slogans on demonstrations, one gets the impression that these women were not merely trade union members, but participated in union activities with enthusiasm and even enjoyment. However, these images and memories were only part of a much longer fight which also had its moments of defeat. Before going into that, some background is necessary.
The pharmaceutical companies which set up operations in and around Bombay from the 1940s onwards were predominantly transnationals, and recruited young, single women in large numbers, especially to work on the packing lines. Their workforces generally were literate, educated and ethnically mixed, and right from the beginning attempted to form unions. Interestingly, most of them did not seek affiliation with the national trade union federations linked to political parties, but tried to form their own ‘employees’ unions’. For example, the East Asiatic and Allied Companies Union (EAACU), formed in 1948, also covered the Danish company Dumex; when the latter was bought by Pfizer in 1950, the company refused to negotiate with the EAACU, so the Pfizer Employees’ Union was formed.[7] Within a few years, it had a woman president:
Then at one of the general body meetings, at Vanmali Hall, they elected me president. I was really nervous, because I didn’t know anything! I had no experience of trade union work before. But they said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll give you all the help you need’. The learning initiative we had to take ourselves, by discussing, listening to them, going to the lawyers, discussing the problems with them, and so on.[8]
According to the women workers, the union movement was not hostile to women, and supported women’s employment rights as they were then understood: the right to security of employment, equal pay, maternity benefits and childcare. Indeed, when a federation of pharmaceutical employees’ unions was formed in 1960, one of the first major actions it launched was an agitation against the marriage bar.
Some indication of how widespread the practice was by then can be gathered from Exhibit C-6, produced by May & Baker Ltd. in a case in 1963, showing that fifteen pharmaceutical companies had a marriage clause in their employment contract for female employees (as against four who did not, cited by the union in Exhibit U-1).[9] What appears to have happened is that a few companies started inserting the clause in their contracts, and were quickly followed by others who were in any case doing the same in practice, but realised that their legal grounds for doing so would be much stronger if they put it down in writing. M.R. Meher, the adjudicator in the May & Baker case in which the union was demanding reinstatement of seventeen women workers who had been dismissed on marriage, summed up the union’s arguments as follows:
On or about 19th July 1962 the Company terminated the services of… 17 female workmen purporting to be “pursuant to the contract of employment and as a result of their getting married”. The Company started employing female workmen from 1953. It was after 1958 that the Company recruited female workmen on the specific condition that if a female workman got married the Company would be at liberty to ask the workman to resign or alternatively terminate her services. The workman had no alternative but to submit to this condition since the necessity of the service was greater than the necessity of future marriage… The contract is bad in law and offends the provisions of the law of contract inasmuch as the condition is a condition subsequent, and opposed to good morals. The Constitution of India prohibits discrimination on the ground of sex alone. The right to marry should not be allowed to be fettered. Marriage is a biological necessity. The restrictive condition is not necessary for the Company. At the time when the female workmen concerned accepted employment on the condition referred to above, they were not in an equal
bargaining position. The action of the employer amounts to unfair labour practice.[10]
The company did not disagree that “marriage is a biological necessity” (!), but replied that:
The services of the workmen concerned were terminated in accordance with the terms of employment with the Company. In 1958 the number of female employees in the Company was about 100. The marriage clause was introduced in June 1957. Prior to 1957 there was no such marriage clause. The Company, however, found it necessary in the interest of efficient operation and in its economic interest not to employ married women… There are now less than 50 women recruited before the marriage clause was brought into force. The Company would like to terminate the services of these employees also but it cannot do so and has of necessity to retain them because when they were recruited the marriage clause was not part of the contract…
Then it is urged that the contract discriminates against some persons on the ground of sex only and contravenes one of the fundamental rights in the Constitution. This argument is equally devoid of substance. In the first place Article 15 of the Constitution prohibits the State from making such discrimination and is not applicable to private employers. In any case, because the services of men are not terminated on marriage it does not follow that there is any discrimination on the ground of sex. The reasons for which the Company does not want to employ married women… have no relevance to men employees.[11]
After Meher has made it clear where his sympathies lie by commenting, ‘It is difficult to believe that so many Companies should have a marriage clause if it was not really in their economic interest,’ his judgement comes as no surprise: ‘The demand is rejected’.[12]
Where there was no marriage clause in the contract, the legal grounds for dismissal were more flimsy, and an occasional adjudicator might even rule in favour of women workers. When Boots Pure Drug Company (India) Ltd. informed Mrs Alice Fernandes ‘by a letter dated 20th June 1951 that they do not keep married women under their employ and hence her services will not be required from 1st August 1951,’[13]
The statement of claim filed in the Industrial Court on behalf of labour with regard to this dispute stated that the reason mentioned in the discharge notice was that the company did not keep married women under its employ and that Mrs Fernandes had got married some days prior to that letter. The statement then goes on to say that the company had been discharging any female employee who got married while in its employment, that such a strange practice had compelled many female employees to refrain from getting married, and that this policy was calculated to deprive female employees of the benefits accruing to them under the Maternity Benefits Act.[14] The statement then complains about such a policy being antisocial and about the hardships caused thereby, and after stating that the practice in question had been voluntarily suspended by the management of Lever Brothers of Bombay, it prays that the worker in question should be reinstated with full wages or in the alternative she should be granted an unemployment compensation, and a further demand is made that in future no female worker should be compelled to resign or be discharged on the ground that she gets married, as that practice is contended to be against all norms of social justice and equity and as the constitution of India guarantees equality of status to females.[15]
In its reply, the company took great pains to establish its philanthropic credentials:
The company states that it has in the past made a deliberate policy of employing for packing work single girls with the intention of giving employment to persons who might otherwise fail to find employment in other spheres. It is well known that families containing a large number of daughters are invariably a heavy drain on the resources of the head of the family, and the policy of the company has been to help to alleviate this burden. The work of packing girls is mainly performed by means of conveyor belt tables. The girls work in teams and the absence of one necessarily holds up the work of the whole team. If the company were to continue to employ packing girls after their marriage, they would require to furnish a large creche in accordance with the provisions of the Factories Act.[16] Having regard to the fact that a very large majority of these packing girls are Goanese, it seemed likely that the facilities of the creche would be enjoyed to the full.[17] This Honourable Tribunal will appreciate that the company’s packing work could not be accomplished with any degree of efficiency in circumstances where various members of the teams would be required to absent themselves at different points of time throughout the day for feeding purposes, etc. If this Honourable Tribunal therefore directs that the company should continue to employ women for these duties even after marriage, the company will reluctantly be compelled in the course of time to replace the girls employed on this work by male workers.[18]
P.D. Vyas, the adjudicator at this Industrial Tribunal, made his judgement hinge on the fact that there was no marriage clause in the employment contract:
According to the Company’s case this is… a process where girls are as suitable as men, but in the past the Company made a deliberate policy of employing single girls for packing work… Undisputedly however it was not made a condition of service while engaging these packing girls that in case they got married it would be a disqualification for further continuance in service or it would afford a ground to put an end to their service. In my opinion the action of the Company in terminating the services of the employee is on the face of it high-handed and with no justification whatsoever.[19]
Referring to the company’s plea that it would be forced to provide a large creche, he commented,
The statement just referred to indicates what is passing in the Company’s mind, and in my opinion no such real or imaginary fear of being required to furnish a large creche would provide ground to terminate the services of married girls, especially when it was not made one of the conditions of service while engaging them that their subsequent marriage would render them liable to be discharged… Whether such a condition if any would be legally valid or just is another question and need not be considered as it does not arise.[20]
Vyas directed the company to reinstate Alice Fernandes in her original post with full back wages, but the company took the case to the Labour Appellate Tribunal and obtained a favourable judgement from M.D. Lalkaka, who felt that,
In the present case, …the Company has given a
reasonable explanation for adopting the practice which it has been in the habit
of enforcing in such a case. The reasons given pertain inter to the economic interests
of the employer, and we do not see anything in the Constitution of India or in
the general principles of social justice to require an employer not to consult
his economic interests in the matter, or force him to run his own concern in a
different way by preventing him from adopting a practice of not employing or
continuing in employment any woman at all or any married woman for his work
when he desires to adopt such a practice fide in what he considers to be in the
interests of his business.[21]
While insisting that ‘in the present case, the employer has acted strictly in accordance with his rights under the civil law in terminating the service of the employee,’[22] Lalkaka also hinted that in future the company should make its case more water-tight: ‘We have been assured that the Company, in future, when employing unmarried women proposes to make it an express term of employment that their services would be liable to be terminated on their marriage, so as to leave no grievances to them on the ground that they might not have known of such a practice when accepting employment.’[23]
If May & Baker concentrated their arguments on the fact that their women employees had agreed to the marriage clause by signing the contract, and Boots emphasised their prerogative to consult their own business interests, Sandoz (India) Ltd. used both arguments against the Sandoz Employees’ Union’s demand that ‘Female employees should not be required to resign from service on marriage.’[24] The union backed up its demand by arguing that, ‘The requirement to resign on marriage is arbitrary, capricious and an unfair labour practice. The practice is bad in law and in violation of fundamental rights and is also against ILO conventions. It makes discrimination against sexes… Marriage cannot be a disability for work and the practice is in violation of marriage and envisages encouragement to immoral traffic of female employees.’[25]
The company’s reply is worth quoting at some length, both because it provides an insight into what was happening in the pharmaceutical industry at that time, and because of the comprehensiveness of its arguments:
The condition to resign is incorporated in the letter offering appointment issued to female workers. It is denied that the condition is arbitrary or capricious or unfair labour practice, or bad in law or against fundamental rights. The allegation that the practice is in violation of the sanctity of marriage and envisages encouragement to immoral traffic of female employees is scandalous…
4. The company has produced Exhibit C/1 which shows that women are recruited by this company on the express understanding that they are unmarried persons and if they marry their services will be terminated forthwith. When confirmed a similar condition is made, viz., that their services would be automatically terminated on marriage. Women accepting the offer of appointment have to sign acceptance of the conditions of employment including this term of employment. Though the women employees in the factory have entered the service knowing full well and accepting this condition, the union wants the Tribunal to intervene and abrogate this condition. Exhibit C/2 shows the printed form of Hoechst Pharmaceuticals Limited. On it is typed a similar condition viz. that the service will continue only as long as the female employee is unmarried and that her service will be automatically terminated on marriage. The fact that the condition is typed on the printed form indicates that the company has recently made this rule of recruitment. Exhibit C/3 which is a form of appointment by May & Baker Limited, a pharmaceutical concern, shows that there is a similar condition, and Exhibits C/4 and C/5 show that Roche Products Limited, Ciba of India Limited also recruit women on this condition. On behalf of the workmen it is stated that an industrial dispute has been raised by Ciba employees to abrogate this condition. Exhibit C/6 shows that Johnson and Johnson of India Limited has a similar condition of service… Exhibit U/3 is produced by the union to show that there is a similar dispute in Glaxo Laboratories Limited…
5. The Union has relied on the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958, which recommends against discrimination only on the basis of race, sex, etc. which has the effect of nullifying equality of opportunity or treatment in employment or occupation, but in this convention there is a clause which is as follows:- “Any distinction, exclusion or preference in respect of a particular job based on the inherent requirements thereof shall not be deemed to be discrimination.”
6. On behalf of the company it is urged that there is no discrimination, that having regard to the requirements of production of pharmaceutical products the material has to be prepared in conditions of extreme care and for which a regular labour force is essential, that married women as they have in addition to looking after the comforts of their husbands, to be absent on maternity leave, have to take care of their children, etc. It is further pointed out that the company’s factory is 4½ miles from a railway station and married female employees who may have to attend to their household duties and look to the needs and comforts of their husbands and children may not be as punctual and regular as unmarried female employees. That the company has no intention of discrimination on the grounds of sex only is shown by the fact that in clerical occupations, in whose case the economic interests of the company do not require such a condition, there is no such condition.[26]
The adjudicator in this case, M.R. Meher, felt that ‘The contention of the company that it is in the interests of the efficient operation of the company not to employ married women is bona fide. From what is stated in paragraph 4 it is seen that some of the large pharmaceutical concerns have such a condition as in the case of this company. In the present case the employees concerned took employment with a knowledge of the condition and signed acceptance of the condition. There is no good case for the Tribunal to modify the contract and abrogate the condition.’ After a lengthy reference to the Labour Appellate Tribunal’s judgement in the Boots Pure Drug Co. case, he concluded, ‘The demand is rejected’.[27]
The main lines of argument are clear.
The companies argue that their women employees agree to being dismissed on
marriage when they sign the employment contract. The unions argue that women workers
agree to this clause not voluntarily but due to their desperate need for
employment, which puts them in an unequal bargaining position; moreover, that
the clause itself is discriminatory and therefore invalid. To which the
companies reply that they are not discriminating against women, but simply looking
after their business interests; that given the domestic division of labour,
married women are not suitable for this kind of factory work, whereas no such
disability affects married men.[28]
Adjudicators almost invariably rule in favour of the company.
Interestingly, the assumption underlying union claims that dismissal of women on marriage constituted discrimination against them was that married women could carry out their domestic responsibilities as well as paid work without neglecting the latter. It was not thought important to argue for equality on the grounds that men too might have domestic responsibilities, and on the rare occasions where unions did put forward demands to this effect, they were promptly squashed. For example, in a charter of demands served on Burmah Shell Refineries Ltd., the Bombay Labour Union and Petroleum Workers’ Union demanded that ‘All male employees shall be granted special leave with pay for the period of confinement of the wife in the maternity home.’[29] In support of this fairly minimal demand, the BLU argued that ‘The joint family system is coming to an end. At the time of delivery the husband finds it difficult to manage the house and other children, if any in the house, in addition to his job. Workers in the Philippines are given such leave.’ The PWU added that ‘the demand is self explanatory’.[30]
This was a common problem in a city like Bombay, yet the company had plenty of reasons why it should not be considered:
The Unions appear to be aware of the novelty of this
demand and so have referred to the alleged practice in the Philippines. The
Company does not admit that such practice prevails in the Philippines. Assuming
that it does, it is not known in what circumstances the facility is granted. Having
regard to the industry-cum-region basis for adjudication, it would be wrong to
follow an alleged practice in the Philippines. In any event, the leave benefits
given by the Company are generous and the demand is extremely unreasonable. If
the demand is granted, it would mean that the employees would not work for
about 37 per cent of the total number of days in a year![31]
Without asking for any clarification
of the basis for the company’s somewhat amazing calculation, the adjudicator
(Meher, no less) ruled that ‘Having considered the submissions of both sides I
see no reason to grant this unusual and unreasonable demand. The demand is
rejected.’[32]
The demand for paternity leave was not pressed by the unions, but the demand for the abolition of the marriage clause was. However, as the examples show, individual unions fighting against dismissals in the Industrial Tribunals did not get very far, and repeated failures taught the unions that this was not the way to win their demands. Where adjudicators and employers shared the same view of married women and management prerogative, there was no point in fighting individual cases of dismissal. What was required was a shift in social perceptions, both of the capacity of married women to do factory work, and of the rights of employers vis-a-vis the rights of employees.
When the Maharashtra State Pharmaceutical Employees’ Federation was formed in February 1960, a coordinated struggle on this issue was one of the first items on their agenda. The occasion arose when a Ms Desai, an employee of May & Baker, was dismissed on getting married. Unions belonging to the Federation pooled their resources in order to appeal against unfavourable judgements in lower courts and pursue the case all the way up to the Supreme Court.[33]
While the case dragged on, women
workers were not idle, but carried out factory gate meetings, took out
processions to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, and even demonstrated
outside the homes of directors, shouting slogans like ‘Hai, hai, kya hua? Shadi
karna mana kiya!’ (Hai, hai, what has happened? They have forbidden us to get
married!) and causing acute embarrassment to foreign directors by alleging in
front of their neighbours that they were encouraging ‘immoral traffic of female
employees’![34] On 20th
February 1965, they went on a one-day fast at Martyrs’ Memorial, organised a huge
procession, ceremonially burned a copy of the marriage clause, and threw the
ashes in the Arabian Sea.
Their activities certainly had an effect on public opinion, because subsequently an unofficial bill to amend Standing Orders prohibiting employers from dismissing women workers when they married was discussed in the Maharashtra Assembly, and the government put pressure on employers not to continue the practice. Final victory was won later in 1965, when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the unions. Women workers could no longer be dismissed on marriage: the right of employers to do so, which had been upheld time after time by adjudicators, was no longer a legal right, and a practice which had been accepted as legitimate was now seen to be discriminatory and unconstitutional. The union campaign had not only shifted the balance of power between employers and workers, but had radically altered social norms and notions of legitimacy.
Battles for equal pay had begun even before the anti-marriage clause agitation, and had by and large been won by the time it was over. Subsequently, struggles for maternity benefits and workplace creches were also generally successful;[35] there can be no doubt that unions took up issues of women’s rights and fought them well. It was a period of great vitality for employees’ unionism in general, and women workers in particular; as one woman unionist put it, ‘There was so much discussion at that time, so much activity: the May & Baker strike, the Roche strike, the anti-marriage-clause agitation! At that time the Federation was active, the union was active, we were all young.’[36] Yet despite their sympathy for women’s rights, union strategies on this issue had certain fatal flaws, which became apparent to the women only much later – whereas astute employers were quicker to seize their advantage. What were these flaws?
The campaign against the marriage
clause can be seen as a struggle for equal opportunities, but only in a very
limited sense. The demand that women should not be discriminated against in
this particular way would certainly be part of an equal
opportunities policy, but could not be the whole of it. For example, job
segregation on a gender basis continued unabated. Apart from a few chemists,
women were concentrated in the ‘semi-skilled’ grades in labour-intensive jobs
like packing, checking, labelling and bottle-washing, and there was no effort
to ensure the recruitment or promotion of women into more skilled jobs. The workers
in the manufacturing departments where the drugs were produced were invariably
men. The usual explanation for this was that the work involved lifting heavy
sacks of chemicals, it was strenuous and sometimes hazardous, and so forth. A
few women pointed out that some of the tasks which had once been heavy or
hazardous were no longer so because of automation, while other jobs were
unnecessarily heavy due to badly designed machinery or inappropriate work organisation
and inadequate staffing; however most women accepted that these jobs were
unsuitable for them.
On the other hand, the absence of women in skilled engineering jobs, explained by managers in terms of their lack of qualification, did not pass unquestioned. Firstly, even if it was true that few young women had the required qualifications, this was itself the result of a discriminatory policy on the part of employers: the director of a technical institute explained that a major reason for the low intake of girls into such courses was their poor prospects of finding suitable employment in the future. Women were not provided with on-the-job training, and even when they managed to pick up the required skills, these were not recognised. As women unionists of Factory A said in a group interview:[37]
‘I feel that if women feel they can do these jobs, they should be allowed to try their hand at it.’
‘In fact, women who work on machines get to know quite a lot about them – setting them up, cleaning them, even doing minor repairs.’
‘Actually, they are doing a maintenance job…’
‘… But not getting the recognition for it.[38]
There was even more indignation in Factory B, because male union leaders had supported management claims:
Male unionist: We don’t have a Machine Operators’ grade as such. Men who operate machines are promoted to the Skilled grade.
Interviewer: Are there any women in the Skilled grade?
Male unionist: No.
Interviewer: But don’t women operate machines?
Woman unionist: Of course they do!
Male unionist: But not continuously. And when they do operate machines, they get paid an allowance for it.
Woman unionist: No, no, we don’t get paid any allowance for operating machines.
Woman unionist: And there are some women working continuously on machines, but they don’t get the grade nor an allowance.
Male unionist: But that’s because we don’t have a Machine Operators’ grade!
Interviewer: What is the difference between a man in the Skilled grade who operates a machine and a woman in the Packers’ grade who operates a machine?
Male unionist: The Skilled worker knows how to look after his machine, set it up, repair it, and so on.
[At this point the male unionist left for a meeting.]
Woman unionist (disgustedly): They’re just the same as management on this point.
Woman unionist: Women operators look after their machines just as much as men do. We can also set up machines and do minor repairs. And major repairs are done by mechanics, even if the machine is operated by a man.
Woman unionist: Men and women do the same work, exactly the same, only women don’t get the grade.[39]
This issue was never tackled by the
unions, and even those women workers who were dissatisfied with the situation never
pressed strongly enough for it to be taken up. Women remained concentrated in labour-intensive
jobs which were subsequently the hardest hit by automation, and this is one of
the reasons why the number and proportion of women working in these factories
fell drastically. Not the only reason, however. Many employers stopped recruiting
women altogether, and when women retired, they were replaced by men even in the
jobs which had formerly been considered to be ‘women’s jobs’. Ironically, Lever
Brothers Ltd., which was commended by the Boots Pure Drug Company employees’
union for having ‘voluntarily suspended’ the practice of dismissing women
workers on marriage, stopped recruiting women in 1952 and was one of the
earliest to adopt this policy. Consequently, the proportion of women in the
workforce fell from around 30 per cent to less than 5 per cent by 1987, and
subsequently to zero. Pfizer, where more than half the workforce consisted of
women, stopped recruiting them in 1969, after a night shift was started. In Roche,
the proportion of women workers fell from 56.7 per cent in 1962 to 9 per cent
in 1983. In the organised sector of the industry as a whole (i.e. ‘Chemicals
and Chemical Products’), the number and proportion of women workers, having risen
to a peak of 16,300 and 19 per cent respectively in 1955, declined thereafter, although
total employment rose steadily.[40]
From the standpoint of employers, it appears that since they could no longer avoid paying maternity benefits and providing a creche by dismissing women when they married, they adopted the alternative policy of not employing women at all. Furthermore, the Factories Act prohibited the employment of women on night work, and this became an additional reason for preferring men at a time when shiftwork was expanding.[41]
In theory, unions could have fought back. They could have fought for an equal opportunities policy which would have prevented women from being segregated in labour-intensive jobs that were selectively being hit by automation, and prevented discrimination against women in recruitment. They could have fought for paid leave for both parents at the birth of a child, and creche facilities for the children of men as well as women. Instead of allowing men to work at all hours of the day and night for minimal shift allowances of a few rupees per shift, they could have demanded not only substantially higher shift payments, but also – perhaps more importantly – extra leave to compensate for unsocial hours of work. Given the success of earlier struggles for women's rights, there is a good chance that at least some of these demands would have been won. But they were seldom raised, and never fought for with the same tenacity and persistence which had characterised the anti-marriage-clause agitation. How can this be explained?
Reading between the lines, one can discern within the unions a fairly clear-cut conception of a gender division of labour which, while being well in advance of that of the employers and adjudicators quoted above, is still far from being one of equality between women and men. Thus women – including married women – are entitled to industrial employment, but within industry there are ‘men’s jobs’ and ‘women’s jobs’; if ever the division breaks down, it is to allow men to enter occupations formerly held by women, but not vice versa. Women are entitled to benefits and facilities – such as paid maternity leave and workplace creches – which enable them to handle their domestic responsibilities as well as paid employment, but caring work in the home is still a woman’s responsibility. Thus there is no need to demand similar benefits and facilities for men, who, on the contrary, can be asked to conform to schedules which would completely disrupt domestic commitments, if any, without being entitled to any significant compensation. Lastly, even within the union there is an implicit division of labour:
I didn’t have any problems being a woman president. But generally, it’s very hard for women – staying out late, there’s so much talk, unless the people at home back you up it’s very difficult. So far as timings were concerned, I was free at that time, so I could manage. My parents were not so particular about my going out and coming in, but all parents and husbands are not like that. Some parents are worried about what other people will say: ‘Oh, your daughter is like this, she is like that…’ The same talk was going on about me also, but I could ignore it because my parents were not bothered. But after marriage… that becomes a big hurdle. I couldn’t stay out so much, I was a little bit scared about what my husband would think, so I began to move away from the union a little. Even if he himself doesn’t mind, if someone else says something to him, he may get tense… some clash may take place, I have to think about that. Because when you work for the public, then people go on talking about you – ‘She is out till midnight, going with that boy, going with this boy…’ Lots of women get put off by that – it’s a major problem. A woman would like to keep her dignity.[42]
Other women who had occupied leadership positions in their unions confirmed this picture of the gossip and unpleasantness which followed – quite apart from the difficulty of fitting in their home responsibilities with a post designed for people without any domestic commitments. The ‘people’ who would gossip about a woman leader of a union included relatives, in-laws and neighbours, but also workmates and colleagues in the union; while there might be back-biting about male leaders too, this particular form of harassment seemed to be reserved for women. A woman’s place might be in her union, but certainly not at the head of it; and while single women could sometimes afford to ignore the gossip, married women – except in the few rare cases where they had a supportive spouse – did so at their peril.[43]
Thus, paradoxically, the very success of the anti-marriage-clause campaign led to a situation where women one by one became less active in their unions, less militant about fighting for their rights, less interested even in setting up women’s committees or caucuses. And employers were quick to abandon a strategy – the marriage bar – which had been defeated, and adopt a new one – non-recruitment of women – which was ideally suited to take advantage of weaknesses in the unions they confronted.
By the 1980s, many women workers and even some male unionists were aware of the inadequacy of a system of benefits and facilities which assumed that men had no domestic commitments: while they might not go so far as arguing for complete equality, they felt the need for recognition that men had some responsibilities in the home. Thus in group interviews about the demands for paternity leave and creche facilities for the children of male workers, the following points were made:
Factory C
‘Men should get leave when their wives deliver – one week, ten days, whatever it is, it’s necessary.’
‘Someone has to look after the other children while she’s in hospital.’
‘Even after she comes home, she needs someone to help her in the house.’
‘Nowadays the joint family is splitting up, more and more families are becoming nuclear, so you can’t assume there will be other relatives around.’
‘Men should also be able to bring their children to the creche. Suppose someone’s wife works at a place where there is no creche, then he should be able to leave the child in our creche.’
‘Or supposing she is sick, normally he would have to take leave and look after the child, but if he can bring the child to the creche, he can save his leave.’
‘After all, the creche is there; it’s no extra expense
to the company to allow male employees to use it.’
Factory D
‘It’s the mother who takes most of the responsibility for children, and they are most attached to her.’
‘That depends on the man. My husband helps a lot with looking after the children, and they are very much attached to him.’
‘After delivery a woman needs to have someone to help her – usually it is the mother or mother-in-law.’
‘My husband took three months’ leave when I had my first child, and he used to do almost all the work in the house.’
‘In this country, there isn’t much sharing of work between husband and wife. In other countries it’s different.’
Interviewer: Should men be allowed to bring their children to the creche?
‘Do you think it’s likely that they would?’
‘Eighty per cent of them won’t. They’ll feel shy to carry their children to work.’
‘I think they ought to be allowed to.’
‘But the children may not want to come with their father. Most children cling to their mother.’
‘Not always. Some children are more fond of their father. It depends on the man.’
‘And on the child.’
Male unionist: ‘At first people may poke fun at the idea because it’s new, but you can be sure that once the facility exists, they will make use of it.’
Factory B
Woman unionist: ‘Paternity leave is necessary.’
Male unionist: ‘People like us who come from distant places have no relatives here – mother, mother-in-law – to help out at such times. So the man has to use his leave and stay at home.’
Factory A
Interviewer: Do you think men should get paternity leave at the time of the birth of their children?
‘What for? What would they do at home?’
‘It’s not necessary.’
‘There’s not much they can do to help at home – they’re not used to it.’
‘Of course, my husband did everything – going to the market, cooking, even bathing the baby – but that’s very rare, most men wouldn’t do all that.’
‘It’s true they should help. Now that women go out to work and help with the earning, men should also help with the work in the house.’
‘Yes, they should get something [as paternity leave] – not as much as two weeks but maybe, say, ten days.’
‘Yes, they should get ten days.’
(As a male committee member comes in) ‘You should ask the men this question. What do you think, should men get paternity leave?
Male unionist: ‘Of course they should!’
‘Do you think men would bring their children to the creche?’
‘I don’t think so. They would be afraid of being laughed at.’
‘Of course, genuine cases should be allowed – if the wife has died, for example. But how can you make sure that each case is genuine? People may abuse the facility.’[44]
Although there is evidence that attitudes are changing, this is still a far cry from the burning conviction and enthusiasm which won the fight against the marriage clause. It is of course understandable, in a country where for generations poor women have had to earn to support themselves and their families, that it would be easier to gain social acceptance for women’s right to employment than to combat an entrenched domestic division of labour. Yet it is precisely this division of labour, and hence of responsibility, which became the basis for the expulsion of women from the organised sector of the pharmaceutical industry. An equal opportunities policy would certainly help to protect women’s employment in the formal sector, but even this might not succeed in cases where employers could plead that they cannot employ women because they have no room for a creche, or are unable to afford maternity benefits, or need production on a shift basis.
This is a case where domestic inequality resulted in workplace discrimination against women which could be justified by employers on practical grounds; and a new union strategy to protect women’s employment in the organised sector, in order to be effective, would have to tackle gender inequality not only in the workplace but also in the home. It would in addition have to eliminate the easy option of shifting production to the unorganised sector by ensuring that workers in this sector (including contract workers) have the same rights as formal sector workers. Moreover, the lack of social security means that individual employers have to bear the entire burden of paying for maternity leave and creche facilities, and this is naturally a disincentive to employing women. A more equitable system would be one where all employers contribute to a social welfare fund, perhaps in proportion to their turnover, and this in turn is used to pay for parental leave and childcare. Until such changes are made, discrimination against women in the organised sector is likely to continue.
(This is a paper presented in 1998 at a conference on Human Rights, State and Gender organised by the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Pune.)
[1] The research for this paper was supported
by an ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) grant obtained through Ruskin
College, Oxford. It draws on both oral and documentary sources, each contributing
different types of information. The resources of the Union Research Group
(URG), Bombay, themselves comprising documentary as well as interview material,
were also used extensively. The main documentary sources were the Bombay
Government Gazette Part I-L and Maharashtra Government Gazette Part I-L,
which deal with all legal matters relating to labour. Collective agreements,
relevant legislation and printed matter put out by unions were also used. Most
of the interviews were with women unionists and workers, but some male
unionists and workers and a few managers were also interviewed.
[2] See Sarah Boston, 1980, Women Workers and the Trade Union Movement, Davis-Poynter, London, p.9.
[3] See Assef Bayat, 1991, Work, Politics and Power, Zed Books, London.
[4] For example, Women Working Worldwide, 1991, Common Interests. Women Organising in Global Electronics, Women Working Worldwide, London; Sheila Rowbotham and Swasti Mitter (eds), 1994, Dignity and Daily Bread. New forms of organising among poor women in the Third World and the First, Routledge, London; Amrita Chhachhi and Renee Pittin (eds), 1996, Confronting State, Capital and Patriarchy. Women Organizing in the Process of Industrialisation, Macmillan Press, U.K. and St Martin’s Press, U.S.A.
[5] I have used the term ‘organised sector’ not only to refer to that sector of industry which is regulated by labour laws and other legislation, but also to refer to workers who are covered by this legislation. Thus contract workers in large-scale industry would still be part of the ‘unorganised sector’ in this sense. More than 90 per cent of workers in India are estimated to belong to the unorganised sector.
[6] Interview with Philo Martin, February, 1994.
[7] Interview with C.C. Mendes, March, 1984.
[8] Interview with Kamala Karkal, January, 1994.
[9] Maharashtra Government Gazette Part I-L, 11/7/63, p.2361.
[10] Ibid. p.2358.
[11] Ibid. pp.2358-60.
[12] Ibid. p.2361.
[13] Bombay Government Gazette Part I-L, 21/5/53, p.1200.
[14] The Bombay Maternity Benefit Act, 1929, which was in force at the time, allowed for eight weeks’ fully paid maternity leave. The all-India Maternity Benefit Act, which came into force in 1961, allowed for twelve weeks’ fully paid maternity leave.
[15] Bombay Government Gazette Part I-L, 16/1/56, pp.242-3.
[16] The Factories Act, 1948, required employers to provide a creche for the children aged under six years of their female employees if there were fifty or more women employed at the workplace.
[17] This refers to the fact that the majority of Goans are Catholics!
[19] Bombay Government Gazette Part I-L, 21/5/53, p.1201.
[20] Ibid. p.1201.
[21] Bombay Government Gazette Part I-L, 16/1/56, p.247.
[22] Ibid. p.246.
[23] Ibid. p.247.
[24] Maharashtra Government Gazette Part I-L, 2/11/61, p.2757.
[25] Ibid. p.2758.
[26] Ibid. pp.2758-9.
[27] Ibid. pp.2759-61.
[28] The reluctance to grant paid maternity leave and provide creche facilities for the children of female employees, hinted at in some of the submissions, was made much more explicit in interviews given by factory managers, and was probably a more important consideration than the fear that married women would not be punctual and regular. As a woman worker commented in an interview, some men have a high rate of absenteeism due to alcoholism, but this has never been used as an argument against employing men!
[29] Maharashtra Government Gazette Part I-L, 2/12/65, p.4181.
[30] Ibid. p.4197.
[31] Ibid. p.4197.
[33] Interview with Kamala Karkal, January, 1994.
[34] Interview with Philo Martin, February, 1994.
[35] For more details, see Rohini Hensman, 1988, ‘The Gender Division of Labour in Manufacturing Industry: A Case Study in India’, IDS Discussion Paper No.253, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.
[36] Interview with Kamala Karkal, January, 1994.
[37] These interviews were conducted as follows. After several months of research conducted by Sujata Gothoskar and myself on behalf of the URG, including a discussion with women unionists from several factories, the research was incorporated in two bulletins: Union Research Group, 1983, ‘Automation and Redeployment on Packing Lines: Need for a Union Strategy’, Bulletin of Trade Union Research and Information, December, No.3; and Union Research Group, 1984, ‘Women’s Employment in Industry: A Challenge for Unions?’ Bulletin of Trade Union Research and Information, February, No.4. Later in 1984, Sujata and I summarised the suggestions made by the meeting of women unionists in a leaflet entitled ‘Making the Workplace a Better Place for Women’, and went back to some of the factories where we had initially conducted the research to discuss the leaflet with groups of four to seven women unionists. These are the group interviews from which quotations have been extracted.
[38] URG group interview, 1984.
[39] URG group interview, 1984.
[40] Government of India, 1964, Women in Employment, Labour Bureau Pamphlet Series 8, Ministry of Labour and Employment.
[41] However, it is notable that recruitment of women into the informal sector, where they did not have the same protection, benefits and facilities or even equal pay, continued and even expanded. Thus employers were not opposed to employing women as such, but simply wished to avoid the extra expense and loss of flexibility involved in employing women who had won workplace rights which took account of their domestic responsibilities.
[42] Interview with Kamala Karkal, January 1994.
[43] Interview with Philo Martin, February 1994.
[44] Extracts from URG group interviews, 1984.