Redefining norms, exploring new avenues: Negotiations of women informal workers in Delhi

The changing nature of production activities in developing countries has brought into focus the contribution of large numbers of women who get pulled into the labor force either by choice or by compulsion. Women in the latter category often find themselves engaged in informal employment, in work that is inconsistent and low-paid, carried out under suboptimal working conditions. Their ability to improve their conditions of work and life is constrained not just by capitalist structures and the organization of production relations, but also by social structures of norms and cultural practices. The analysis in this article, based on ethnographic research among women engaged in the garment and construction industries in Delhi provides insights into the strategies that some women workers, in the two sectors that also largely comprised women belonging two different religious communities, adopt to contest precarious working conditions and patriarchal norms, and transition into more autonomous positions. This article asks that given the constraints particular to the garment and construction sectors, why and how do some women resist against structures of gender oppression? How do the differences or similarities in the socio-cultural norms of the two communities constrain and at times, also enable women's choices and actions? This article brings forth the factors that lead women to resist against structures of gender oppression, challenge inequalities inherent in the organization of work, and the new meanings that they may assign to their own negotiations and interpretations of norms.