Masculinity, femininity, and servitude: Domestic workers in Calcutta in the late twentieth century

Feminist Studies

Volumn 26, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 691-718

  Ray, Raka ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0039014144     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3178646     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. V. Tellis-Nayak, "Power and Solidarity: Clientage in Domestic Service," Current Anthropology 24 (February 1983): 67-74.
2. Anna Rubbo and Michael Taussig, "Up Off Their Knees: Servanthood in South-West Columbia," Latin American Perspectives 39 (fall 1983): 2-23.
3. See, for example Julia Wrigley, Other People's Children (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Bonnie Thornton Dill, Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants (New York: Garland, 1994); Carole Turbin, "Domestic Service Revisited: Private Household Workers and Employers in a Shifting Economic Environment," International Labor and Working Class History 47 (spring 1995): 91-100; Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A (New York: Routledge, 1992); Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Cristina Riegos, "Sin Organización, No Hay Solución: Latina Domestic Workers and Non-Traditional Labor Organizing," Latino Studies Journal 8 (fall 1997): 54-83. Evelyn Nakano Glenn's Issei, Nissei War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) is a powerful exception. More recently, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila address the ways in which migrant domestic workers try to mother their children from afar. See "'I'm Here, but I'm There': The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood," Gender and Society 11 (October 1997): 548-71 .
4. See, for example Julia Wrigley, Other People's Children (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Bonnie Thornton Dill, Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants (New York: Garland, 1994); Carole Turbin, "Domestic Service Revisited: Private Household Workers and Employers in a Shifting Economic Environment," International Labor and Working Class History 47 (spring 1995): 91-100; Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A (New York: Routledge, 1992); Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Cristina Riegos, "Sin Organización, No Hay Solución: Latina Domestic Workers and Non-Traditional Labor Organizing," Latino Studies Journal 8 (fall 1997): 54-83. Evelyn Nakano Glenn's Issei, Nissei War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) is a powerful exception. More recently, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila address the ways in which migrant domestic workers try to mother their children from afar. See "'I'm Here, but I'm There': The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood," Gender and Society 11 (October 1997): 548-71 .
5. See, for example Julia Wrigley, Other People's Children (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Bonnie Thornton Dill, Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants (New York: Garland, 1994); Carole Turbin, "Domestic Service Revisited: Private Household Workers and Employers in a Shifting Economic Environment," International Labor and Working Class History 47 (spring 1995): 91-100; Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A (New York: Routledge, 1992); Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Cristina Riegos, "Sin Organización, No Hay Solución: Latina Domestic Workers and Non-Traditional Labor Organizing," Latino Studies Journal 8 (fall 1997): 54-83. Evelyn Nakano Glenn's Issei, Nissei War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) is a powerful exception. More recently, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila address the ways in which migrant domestic workers try to mother their children from afar. See "'I'm Here, but I'm There': The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood," Gender and Society 11 (October 1997): 548-71 .
6. See, for example Julia Wrigley, Other People's Children (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Bonnie Thornton Dill, Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants (New York: Garland, 1994); Carole Turbin, "Domestic Service Revisited: Private Household Workers and Employers in a Shifting Economic Environment," International Labor and Working Class History 47 (spring 1995): 91-100; Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A (New York: Routledge, 1992); Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Cristina Riegos, "Sin Organización, No Hay Solución: Latina Domestic Workers and Non-Traditional Labor Organizing," Latino Studies Journal 8 (fall 1997): 54-83. Evelyn Nakano Glenn's Issei, Nissei War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) is a powerful exception. More recently, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila address the ways in which migrant domestic workers try to mother their children from afar. See "'I'm Here, but I'm There': The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood," Gender and Society 11 (October 1997): 548-71 .
7. See, for example Julia Wrigley, Other People's Children (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Bonnie Thornton Dill, Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants (New York: Garland, 1994); Carole Turbin, "Domestic Service Revisited: Private Household Workers and Employers in a Shifting Economic Environment," International Labor and Working Class History 47 (spring 1995): 91-100; Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A (New York: Routledge, 1992); Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Cristina Riegos, "Sin Organización, No Hay Solución: Latina Domestic Workers and Non-Traditional Labor Organizing," Latino Studies Journal 8 (fall 1997): 54-83. Evelyn Nakano Glenn's Issei, Nissei War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) is a powerful exception. More recently, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila address the ways in which migrant domestic workers try to mother their children from afar. See "'I'm Here, but I'm There': The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood," Gender and Society 11 (October 1997): 548-71 .
8. See, for example Julia Wrigley, Other People's Children (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Bonnie Thornton Dill, Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants (New York: Garland, 1994); Carole Turbin, "Domestic Service Revisited: Private Household Workers and Employers in a Shifting Economic Environment," International Labor and Working Class History 47 (spring 1995): 91-100; Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A (New York: Routledge, 1992); Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Cristina Riegos, "Sin Organización, No Hay Solución: Latina Domestic Workers and Non-Traditional Labor Organizing," Latino Studies Journal 8 (fall 1997): 54-83. Evelyn Nakano Glenn's Issei, Nissei War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) is a powerful exception. More recently, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila address the ways in which migrant domestic workers try to mother their children from afar. See "'I'm Here, but I'm There': The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood," Gender and Society 11 (October 1997): 548-71 .
9. See, for example Julia Wrigley, Other People's Children (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Bonnie Thornton Dill, Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants (New York: Garland, 1994); Carole Turbin, "Domestic Service Revisited: Private Household Workers and Employers in a Shifting Economic Environment," International Labor and Working Class History 47 (spring 1995): 91-100; Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A (New York: Routledge, 1992); Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Cristina Riegos, "Sin Organización, No Hay Solución: Latina Domestic Workers and Non-Traditional Labor Organizing," Latino Studies Journal 8 (fall 1997): 54-83. Evelyn Nakano Glenn's Issei, Nissei War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) is a powerful exception. More recently, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila address the ways in which migrant domestic workers try to mother their children from afar. See "'I'm Here, but I'm There': The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood," Gender and Society 11 (October 1997): 548-71 .
10. See, for example Julia Wrigley, Other People's Children (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Bonnie Thornton Dill, Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family among Black Female Domestic Servants (New York: Garland, 1994); Carole Turbin, "Domestic Service Revisited: Private Household Workers and Employers in a Shifting Economic Environment," International Labor and Working Class History 47 (spring 1995): 91-100; Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A (New York: Routledge, 1992); Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985); Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Cristina Riegos, "Sin Organización, No Hay Solución: Latina Domestic Workers and Non-Traditional Labor Organizing," Latino Studies Journal 8 (fall 1997): 54-83. Evelyn Nakano Glenn's Issei, Nissei War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) is a powerful exception. More recently, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila address the ways in which migrant domestic workers try to mother their children from afar. See "'I'm Here, but I'm There': The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood," Gender and Society 11 (October 1997): 548-71 .
11. See, for example, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940 (Prince on: Princeton University Press, 1989); Leela Fernandes, Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class, and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); and Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999).
12. See, for example, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940 (Prince on: Princeton University Press, 1989); Leela Fernandes, Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class, and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); and Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999).
13. See, for example, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940 (Prince on: Princeton University Press, 1989); Leela Fernandes, Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class, and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); and Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999).
14. Gillian Hart, "Engendering Everyday Resistance: Gender, Patronage, and Production Politics in Rural Java," Journal of Peasant Studies 19 (October 1991): 93-121; and Karin Kapadia, Siva and Her Sisters: Gender, Caste, and Class in Rural South India (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).
15. Gillian Hart, "Engendering Everyday Resistance: Gender, Patronage, and Production Politics in Rural Java," Journal of Peasant Studies 19 (October 1991): 93-121; and Karin Kapadia, Siva and Her Sisters: Gender, Caste, and Class in Rural South India (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).
16. In the late nineteenth century in Colonial Bengal, the Bengali elite lost their power over their land and had to turn increasingly to professional, administrative, and clerical employment. See Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman' and the 'Effeminate Bengal' in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995); and Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
17. In the late nineteenth century in Colonial Bengal, the Bengali elite lost their power over their land and had to turn increasingly to professional, administrative, and clerical employment. See Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman' and the 'Effeminate Bengal' in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995); and Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
18. Of the fifteen servants, eight are women and seven are men. They are all first-generation domestic workers, who came to Calcutta from the rural areas of Bengal either because their land could not sustain them or, in the case of the women, because they were married. Most are lower castes, two are Brahmin (a married couple), and one man is Christian. Three women are separated from their husbands, one is widowed and the others are married. All the men are married, although two do not live with their wives. They range in age from thirty to sixty-six and have been working between seven and thirty years. The employers are primarily upper middle class, upper caste, and Bengali. They live in old bungalows and apartment buildings and work in the corporate world and the professions. The youngest employer was thirty and the oldest, eighty. All of them grew up with servants, and none has been without servants for a long stretch of time. All interviews were open-ended conversations. The interviews with employers were conducted jointly by Seemin Qayum (from the University of London) and myself and lasted from one to four hours, with the average being two and a half hours. I interviewed live-in workers at the sites they chose, usually their "quarters" in the apartment buildings of their employers. It was more difficult to interview the workers than employers for several reasons. Because they are live-in workers, they are constantly at the beck and call of their employers and have little time to spare. Most workers have between one and three hours off in the afternoon. This is the time they use to shower, eat their lunch, sleep, or do their own errands. They were rarely free at night before 10 p.m. Thus, I often started conversations in the afternoon and completed them at night. Worker interviews were conducted in Bengali. Why would domestic servants agree to speak with me, since I am clearly of the employer class? There is no simple answer to this question. I entered the "field" with the help of a domestic servant I have known and talked with for many years. He introduced me to my first three interviewees who, in turn, led me to others. Because I was recommended to them by people they trusted, were they initially more open to me? Or was it the substance of the questions that convinced them that I was safe? Perhaps it is the intensity of their desire to speak and the lack of opportunity to do so that made the barriers fall. Although most interviews with employees started out slowly, soon I could barely keep up with note taking, as the workers, especially the women, spilled out their life stories. One woman said that my intentions were good, but the people who really needed to read my book (such as her employer) would not. "You see," she said, "They probably think 'Why would anyone write a book about those people?' Such people have no conscience. Can you really reach them?"
19. See, for example, Lesley Gill, Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class, and Domestic Service in Bolivia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Elsa Chaney and Mary Garcia Castro, Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); Christine B.N. Chin, "Walls of Silence and Late-Twentieth Century Representations of the Foreign Female Domestic Worker: The Case of Filipina and Indonesian Female Servants in Malaysia," International Migration Review 31 (summer 1997): 353-85. Indeed, despite the fact that their own data show that there are many thousands of male domestic servants in India, a study sponsored by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) declares: "In Indian tradition, females are most often involved in domestic chores" and claims that in most cases employers prefer female servants because of the idea that women are more "submissive, polite, and loyal" (CBCI, 1980, 31).
20. See, for example, Lesley Gill, Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class, and Domestic Service in Bolivia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Elsa Chaney and Mary Garcia Castro, Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); Christine B.N. Chin, "Walls of Silence and Late-Twentieth Century Representations of the Foreign Female Domestic Worker: The Case of Filipina and Indonesian Female Servants in Malaysia," International Migration Review 31 (summer 1997): 353-85. Indeed, despite the fact that their own data show that there are many thousands of male domestic servants in India, a study sponsored by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) declares: "In Indian tradition, females are most often involved in domestic chores" and claims that in most cases employers prefer female servants because of the idea that women are more "submissive, polite, and loyal" (CBCI, 1980, 31).
21. See, for example, Lesley Gill, Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class, and Domestic Service in Bolivia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Elsa Chaney and Mary Garcia Castro, Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); Christine B.N. Chin, "Walls of Silence and Late-Twentieth Century Representations of the Foreign Female Domestic Worker: The Case of Filipina and Indonesian Female Servants in Malaysia," International Migration Review 31 (summer 1997): 353-85. Indeed, despite the fact that their own data show that there are many thousands of male domestic servants in India, a study sponsored by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) declares: "In Indian tradition, females are most often involved in domestic chores" and claims that in most cases employers prefer female servants because of the idea that women are more "submissive, polite, and loyal" (CBCI, 1980, 31).
22. Domestic servants have historically been male in Africa. See Karen Hansen, African Encounters with Domesticity (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992).
23. As Ruth Milkman and her colleagues have persuasively argued, "a crucial determinant of the extent of employment in paid domestic labor in a given location is the degree of economic inequality there." See Ruth Milkman, Ellen Reese, and Benita Roth, "The Macrosociology of Paid Domestic Labor," forthcoming in Work and Occupations 25 (November 1998): 453-510.
24. See the Census of India, 1971 and 1981, Series 1, India, Part III-B (iii) General Economic Tables, 1981. However, this is a vastly undercounted number because the census includes only maids and other house cleaners (category 531) but not cooks, ayahs (nannies), or any other category of domestic worker. In addition to women and men, this class comprises thousands of children, both girls and boys, who work as domestic servants, whom the Census leaves out. According to a study commissioned by the CBCI, 16.65 percent of the domestic servants interviewed were under the age of fifteen. See Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, A National Socio-Economic Survey of Domestic Workers (Madras: Catholic Bishops' Conference of India Commission for Labour, 1980), 36.
25. See the Census of India, 1971 and 1981, Series 1, India, Part III-B (iii) General Economic Tables, 1981. However, this is a vastly undercounted number because the census includes only maids and other house cleaners (category 531) but not cooks, ayahs (nannies), or any other category of domestic worker. In addition to women and men, this class comprises thousands of children, both girls and boys, who work as domestic servants, whom the Census leaves out. According to a study commissioned by the CBCI, 16.65 percent of the domestic servants interviewed were under the age of fifteen. See Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, A National Socio-Economic Survey of Domestic Workers (Madras: Catholic Bishops' Conference of India Commission for Labour, 1980), 36.
26. Census of India, 1981, Tamil Nadu Series 20, part III A&B (ii); Census of India, 1981, Maharashtra, Series 12, part III A&B (iii); Census of India, 1981, Uttar Pradesh, Series 22, part III A&B (v); Census of India, 1981, West Bengal, Series 23, part III A&B (ii).
27. Census of India, 1981, Tamil Nadu Series 20, part III A&B (ii); Census of India, 1981, Maharashtra, Series 12, part III A&B (iii); Census of India, 1981, Uttar Pradesh, Series 22, part III A&B (v); Census of India, 1981, West Bengal, Series 23, part III A&B (ii).
28. Census of India, 1981, Tamil Nadu Series 20, part III A&B (ii); Census of India, 1981, Maharashtra, Series 12, part III A&B (iii); Census of India, 1981, Uttar Pradesh, Series 22, part III A&B (v); Census of India, 1981, West Bengal, Series 23, part III A&B (ii).
29. Census of India, 1981, Tamil Nadu Series 20, part III A&B (ii); Census of India, 1981, Maharashtra, Series 12, part III A&B (iii); Census of India, 1981, Uttar Pradesh, Series 22, part III A&B (v); Census of India, 1981, West Bengal, Series 23, part III A&B (ii).
30. Nirmala Banerjee, Women Workers in the Unorganized Sector: The Calcutta Experience (Hyderabad, India: Sangam Books, 1985); and Bela Bandopadhyay, interview with author, Calcutta, 22 Jan 1998.
31. Nirmala Banerjee, Women Workers in the Unorganized Sector: The Calcutta Experience (Hyderabad, India: Sangam Books, 1985); and Bela Bandopadhyay, interview with author, Calcutta, 22 Jan 1998.
32. Gautam Bhadra, interview with author, 7 Jan. 1998.
33. Robert W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995).
34. Sarkar, 170.
35. For other writings on the bhadralok, see Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Calcutta (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1989); and Rabindra Ray, The Naxalites and Their Ideology (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988).
36. For other writings on the bhadralok, see Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Calcutta (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1989); and Rabindra Ray, The Naxalites and Their Ideology (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988).
37. Banerjee, Parlour and the Streets.
38. Perhaps because they resisted the British through the intellect rather than the sword, the bhadralok were defined by the British as effete, the opposite of both the British gentleman and the loyal Pathan warriors. This charge of effeminacy applied specifically to the Bengali elite and not to Bengali workers or peasants. See Sinha, 16. The British wondered at these "soft-bodied little people" who could nonetheless compete successfully against the British in the civil service exams and become the salaried workers, professionals, and civil servants that form the core of the Bengali postcolonial elite. See John Rosselli, "The Self-image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal," Past and Present 86 (February 1980): 121-48.
39. Partha Chatterjee, "Nationalist Resolution of the Woman Question," in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), 233-53.
40. Chatterjee.
41. Himani Banerjee, "Attired in Virtue: The Discourse on Shame (lajja) and Clothing of the Bhadramahila in Colonial Bengal," in From the Seams of History, ed. Bharati Ray (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 81.
42. Census of India, 1991, Series I, Provisional Population Tables.
43. Hilary Standing, Dependence and Autonomy: Women's Employment and the Family in India (London and Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
44. Ibid.; and Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849-1905 (New York: Routledge, 1991). For a fascinating study of the advice given to middle-class women hiring servants at the turn of the century, see Swapna Banerjee, "Exploring the World of Domestic Manuals: Bengali Middle-Class Women and Servants in Colonial Calcutta," in Sagar: South Asia Graduate Research Journal 3, no. 1 (1996).
45. Ibid.; and Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849-1905 (New York: Routledge, 1991). For a fascinating study of the advice given to middle-class women hiring servants at the turn of the century, see Swapna Banerjee, "Exploring the World of Domestic Manuals: Bengali Middle-Class Women and Servants in Colonial Calcutta," in Sagar: South Asia Graduate Research Journal 3, no. 1 (1996).
46. Ibid.; and Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849-1905 (New York: Routledge, 1991). For a fascinating study of the advice given to middle-class women hiring servants at the turn of the century, see Swapna Banerjee, "Exploring the World of Domestic Manuals: Bengali Middle-Class Women and Servants in Colonial Calcutta," in Sagar: South Asia Graduate Research Journal 3, no. 1 (1996).
47. Swadhinata here refers to a specific relationship to work. It is not so much the fact that one works for someone else that prevents one from being swadhin. People who work in offices do work for someone else. But, rather, it is the fact of having to be on call all day and be unable to go home at the end of the day, which makes one paradhin (unfree). While both employers and servants use this word, the servants use it repeatedly, as we shall see.
48. Hansen reports a similar dynamic in Zambia. In Janet Bujra's study of Tanzania, only two out of the sixty employers interviewed thought women were better servants. See Janet Bujra, "Men at Work in the Tanzanian Home: How Did They Ever Learn?" in African Encounters with Domesticity, 242-65.
49. Bengali landlords, for example, frequently used lower-caste men to fight off rivals and frighten tenants. See Roselli.
50. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer who reminded me of this point.
51. James Scott, Weapons of the Weak (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
52. Kapadia; Kalpana Ram, Mukkuvar Women: Gender, Hegemony, and Capitalist Transformation in a South Indian Fishing Community (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1992).
53. Paul Willis, Learning to Labour (1977; Aldershot, England: Gower, 1981).
54. See, for example, Luisa Passerini, Autobiographies of a Generation: Italy, 1968 (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1996); and Barbara Laslett and Barrie Thorne, eds., Feminist Sociology: Life Histories of a Movement (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
55. See, for example, Luisa Passerini, Autobiographies of a Generation: Italy, 1968 (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1996); and Barbara Laslett and Barrie Thorne, eds., Feminist Sociology: Life Histories of a Movement (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
56. Fernandes; and Standing.
57. Psychologist Sudhir Kakar concludes, following his interviews with two working-class women in Delhi, that despite their many hardships, there is nothing to dim the luminosity of their romantic longings." See Sudhir Kakar, The Indian Psyche (Delhi: Viking India/Penguin, 1996), 71. 1 would argue that it is not just romantic love to which they cling but rather to the idea of being acknowledged, recognized, and appreciated.
58. The literature on domestic workers in Latin America emphasizes young women's desire for autonomy as well. See Elisabeth Jelin, "Migration and Labor Force Participation of Latin American Women: The Domestic Servants in the Cities," Signs 3 (spring 1977): 129-41.
59. Jessica Benjamin, Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 33.
60. Lakshmi uses the same Bengali word bhalobasha to refer to the affections of her employer and husband.
61. Manisha Roy, Bengali Women (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1972).
62. See, for example, Hum Aapke Hai Kann? (Who am I to you?) and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The gallant one will win the bride), two of the most popular Hindi films in recent years.
63. Rubbo and Taussig.
64. See also Hansen.
65. Ram.