Wilful Resignations: Women, Labour and Life in Urban India

Abstract

Why do young women in New Delhi, India wilfully leave service employment even though their incomes are important for the sustenance of their families? This chapter seeks to answer this question based on long-term ethnographic research with lower middle-class women. It argues that that service employment is just one of many strategies that women invest in to secure their lives. In particular, women tend to leave low-paid and insecure service employment in instances where this employment is seen to represent a threat to their respectability. Young women switch from one activity to another in search for stability and security, combining employment, education, skills training, with domestic, care, and status-production work. Together these activities ensure the reproduction of life, underlining the importance of non-income generating activities and aspirations in shaping experiences of ‘ordinary work’.