Indian Journal of Industrial Relations: Economics & Social Dev.

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Invisible Scars: Female Ready-made Garment Workers’ Gendered Exploitation


Affiliations
1 Associate Professor (OB/HR), IIM Kashipur, India
2 Professor (OB/HR, IR & Labor Law), VIT Business School, Chennai, India
     

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This paper provides a first-hand account of the reasons underpinning the exploitation of Ready-Made Garments (RMG) workers in Bangalore by integrating their lived experiences at work and beyond with the supply chain, dysfunctional labor laws and lack of trade union mobilization. These rural Indian women migrant workers discover that it is no better than the past of poverty and caste-oppression. Their gendered experience is exacerbated by sexual and verbal abuse in an industry in which there is either extreme work pressure or no work at all, the pandemic has further worsened their poverty. Their agency is muzzled and dissent is silenced and the state, civil society trade unions and RMG exporters have singularly and cumulatively failed the woman RMG worker in Bangalore.
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  • Invisible Scars: Female Ready-made Garment Workers’ Gendered Exploitation

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Authors

A.V. Raman
Associate Professor (OB/HR), IIM Kashipur, India
L.R.K. Krishnan
Professor (OB/HR, IR & Labor Law), VIT Business School, Chennai, India

Abstract


This paper provides a first-hand account of the reasons underpinning the exploitation of Ready-Made Garments (RMG) workers in Bangalore by integrating their lived experiences at work and beyond with the supply chain, dysfunctional labor laws and lack of trade union mobilization. These rural Indian women migrant workers discover that it is no better than the past of poverty and caste-oppression. Their gendered experience is exacerbated by sexual and verbal abuse in an industry in which there is either extreme work pressure or no work at all, the pandemic has further worsened their poverty. Their agency is muzzled and dissent is silenced and the state, civil society trade unions and RMG exporters have singularly and cumulatively failed the woman RMG worker in Bangalore.

References