Women, Work and Health: An Interconnected Web: Case of Drugs and Cosmetics Industries

Abstract

WOMEN's status, it has often been argued, is an indicator of the level of development of particular societies. Women's workforce participation rates, on the other hand, are also related to women's status. These assumptions are seriously under threat with the unfolding of several processes at the level of the economy and households, if not even earlier. 

The thesis of feminisation of the workforce globally has also been challenged on several grounds [Elson 19961. One such basis is the questioning of the quality of work women engage in and under what circumstances. It is not quite sufficient to argue that "it is better to be exploited than not to be" [Deshpande 19941. What one needs to seriously question is the underlying relations and the assumptions in the labour market and in the household-decision-making processes that assign particular types of work to men and women.