Caring Hands, Fragile Health: Unravelling Women’s Occupational Health & Well-being in Domestic Work.

Abstract

Jagori has been mobilising and organising women domestic workers living in resettlement and low-income colonies of Delhi (such as in in Madanpur Khadar) for more than 15 years. This work included research, networking with other organisations taking up issues of domestic workers as well as campaigns and advocacy. Keeping in line with its core agenda of building leadership of community women, Jagori has strived to build the identities of domestic workers as ‘workers’, and nurture and promote their leadership. The agitations and campaigns focused on issues like lack of data on the exact number of domestic workers in India, absence of any National/ State legislation codifying what constitutes the workplace and lack of a protection and entitlement framework - tilting the power balance almost completely in favour of the employer - robbing domestic workers of any tangible bargaining power and right to descent work and violence-free worksites.