Work and Place: The Non-Boundaries of Women’s Work :

Abstract

Issues around women’s unpaid labour and their difficulties in balancing paid work with domestic duties have received attention in academic and policy circles, raising questions about women’s invisible contributions to the formal and informal economy. These questions point to the need to rethink the fundamental categories of work and workplace, the ways in which women negotiate the fuzzy boundaries between domestic and paid labour, and the material realities of where and how this takes place. What notions of security and safety might operate, what does a workplace look and feel like, and how does a woman understand and build her creative and economic identity when this must be shaped within the domestic sphere? This chapter draws on conversations with women bangle makers in the Indian city of Hyderabad to unpack their daily negotiations between private and public, personal and occupational spheres as they carve out space for paid work.