“Will My Daughter Find an Organic Husband?”
Domesticating Fair Trade through Cultural Entrepreneurship
Debating the value of emerging sustainability regimes, especially notions of fairness (swachchata) and organic cultivation (jaivik kheti bāri) were a regular topic of conversation in women’s households both in plantations and the cooperative area. The everyday use of the word swachcha and the English organic1 combined with the interpretation of emerging discourses of sustainability took an embodied form, where metaphors of organic and fair appeared in household conversations, Women constantly discussed their well-being in terms of the quality of their daily food intake, the medications they bought for daily ailments and extended the discussion on organics to reflect on the bleak future for their sons and daughters, but mostly sons. As stated in chapter 3, the massive male unemployment and substance abuse was a perpetual source of concern and therefore in plantations women’s household dynamics was premised on the affective management of individual and collective crisis in Nepali masculinity (see also Elliston 2004; Freeman 2014). Therefore, local understandings of sustainable organic agriculture in Darjeeling must heed to reflection and analysis of these embodied manifestations of justice as they hold the key to women’s self-understanding of their capabilities and resultant “gendered projects of value.”
In this chapter I focus on the communicative and symbolic dimensions of women’s labor within and outside their home to demonstrate how the cultural entrepreneurship of women at both sites effectively contained the disciplining through honor and shame. Noted feminist anthropologist Lamia Karim (2011) has rightfully designated women’s honor and shame as the hidden collateral that results in an overwhelming rate of return on microcredit loans in Bangladesh. The dividends of honor and shame are very much related to appropriation of women’s labor in plantations and in SPO/Cooperative villages, as is evident from previous chapters. I build on the works of Karim and other feminist anthropologists, like Diane Wolf, Carla Freeman, and Deborah Elliston, to argue that under certain circumstances honor and shame can also be creatively designated as a category of risk to unravel male hegemonic control over women’s intimate material and affective lives by interpreting and establishing household work as risky business (Sen and Majumder 2015).
These everyday maneuvers help us problematize romantic understandings of the radical possibility of household politics as espoused by feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser (2013) and geographer Vinay Gidwani (2008). Instead the ethnographic attention to complexity of affective management of material and symbolic resources in households leads us to a more nuanced understanding of the possibilities engendered in the household sphere. Both Fraser and Gidwani identify that the “government of work” (Gidwani 2008) is an important aspect of understanding the dynamics of late capital and its articulation with varied modes of production. Theoretically both scholars have emphasized the radical potential of the uncommodified household sphere to provide a critique of capital as it penetrates every iota of our existence. Frazer, for example, suggests recognition of uncommodified activities of household work and care work to create possibilities of a post-neoliberal society. Vinay Gidwani also shows how the flow of capital and its urge to maximize profit is interrupted in the spheres where withdrawal of labor from the commodity circuit of the wage labor is valorized. These spheres are not dialectically opposed to capital, such as the labor unions or political parties, but they inadvertently oppose capital because they champion affective priorities that do not seem to dovetail with the necessities of profit maximization. These frictions and interruptions hold the radical potential for a politics of value that contests values imposed by corporate-friendly neoliberal reforms. What is missing here is an analysis of contextual constraints.
Therefore, I propose that we attend to how the logic of regional politics and hegemonic notions of development provides the register for affective management of relationships. Women try to control the traffic in emotions and goods to simultaneously participate in hegemonic frames for social justice, but in opportune moments rupture this articulation of politics, development, and social reproduction, by advancing their own gendered projects of value and creative social entrepreneurialism in which bank loans and household chores are juxtaposed as detrimental. As Diana Wolf (2011, 137) suggests, instead of the “romantic assumptions about family and household unity” one should maintain “that there exist instead multiple voices, gendered interests and unequal distribution of resources.” Unlike Wolf, missing from Gidwani and Fraser’s conceptualization is an intersectional look at the minutia of household politics where radicalism may just be another face of appropriation, as demonstrated in chapter 4 and also in chapter 8.
Fair Trade−related activities produced a “new social landscape” (Schroeder 1999, 60) of community and household relations in the cooperative, which not only affected the “conjugal contract” but also relations between siblings and other household members. Women’s reappropriation of Fair Trade ideas and their economic ventures in the cooperative area escalated household conflicts over the material and symbolic implications of women’s work. In the plantation, household conflicts were independent of Fair Trade activities, although they also centered on implications of women’s gainful employment and its symbolic dimensions.
The two most important distinctions between household relations in the plantation and the cooperative were the nature of intra-household conflicts and public exposure of household issues at the respective sites. The differences in household relations and community participation were influenced by the varying power structures that shaped everyday life in the plantation and the cooperative. Women’s work in the plantation was surveilled and appropriated through restricted employment practices and male-dominated unions. In the cooperative women’s work was appropriated by the cooperative through male policing of women’s work within the village and through mobilization of gender ideologies about village women. Women in the cooperative were more adept at negotiating surveillance by publicly challenging the pressures put on them through household relations. Women plantation workers kept their household issues to themselves since plantation women were seen as “chuchchi” (with sharp tongue) and less respectable (as descried in chapters 6 and 7; see also Chatterjee 2001). Women plantation workers were deeply envied by their male family members who faced a gloomy economic future. Contrary to their stereotypical image of sharp-tongued chuchchis, women plantation workers rarely fought with managers, as they feared being shamed; they rarely “talked back.”
The observation of household relations and close attention to the narratives of the women plantation workers and women tea farmers reveal that Fair Trade−related concerns had entered the micro-politics of household and community politics in the tea cooperative, unlike the plantation. Women tea farmers in the cooperative used Fair Trade trainings, certification processes, and public events to draw attention to the structural inequalities in their communities, which were sustained through household relations.
The home is a contested space. Partha Chatterjee (1989) shows that nationalist discourses made the domestic space—the home—a repository of tradition, a force of inertia against the ebb of colonial intervention. For smallholder tea farmers living in the villages of Darjeeling, confining the work of their women to the homestead was a way of maintaining their social distinction from plantation workers. Governance of women’s work was used as a marker of difference and closely associated with discourses of social mobility. While the tea farmers in Darjeeling were only second-generation farmers and descendants of tea plantation workers, they liked to see themselves as essentially different from plantation workers. In their view they were the “farmers” and their wives didn’t go to work, alluding to a difference in respectability and identity. Women plantation workers were accorded different class sexuality (Ong 1987; Stoler 1995) because of long hours they spent outside their homes. Male envy of their occupation also compounded negative portrayals of women plantation workers as evident from the casual use of the three Ws trope in chapter 2.
While on the one hand this spatial ethic of doing “home work” was prevalent at the discursive level, women tea farmers, as I discussed in chapter 6, have creatively worked to transcend the space of the home by engaging in monetary transactions and entrepreneurship under the garb of being dutiful housewives. Uma Chakravarti (1990) writes that Indian nationalists praised women for their support of anti-colonial nationalism activities of their men folk; at the same time deploring wage work. Ethnic Nepalis, while critical of mainstream Indian culture and nationalism (as demonstrated in chapters 1 and 2), share some common Hindu gender ideologies. Such commonalities are more pronounced among tea farmers who own their land—especially well-to-do villagers—who see themselves as economically better off than their counterparts in the plantations. Tea farmers see their women as distinct from market women, or plantation workers (see also Derne 2000).
A very different kind of visibility politics affected the household and social relations of women plantation workers. As I mentioned in chapter 4, women plantation workers occupied the lower-end jobs. However, because of the hyper-visibility of women plantation workers in gendered recruitment patterns, their male colleagues and household members envied them. The chronic unemployment of male youth escalated household tension. Women feared that if they took the issue of wages or new shoes for the monsoon to the unions, it would not be taken up by the union. Women were already seen to have a much more secure financial future in their families. In the plantations, women’s relationships were tense with their male relatives, mostly with their brother’s-in-law (husband’s brothers) and sometimes even their husbands. Verbal abuse by male colleagues and harassment were never reported to the union, as male union members would rarely take up their case. Male plantation workers and male members of their family were disinterested in taking up these “women’s issues.”
In the rest of the chapter, I provide ethnographic details of household debates and dynamics in the plantation and the cooperative. By exploring women tea farmers’ narratives around “risk,” I show how women publicly discuss household politics. They implicate household members in their failure to reduce the dominance of middlemen in the economic lives of the villages. For women tea farmers, swāchchā vyāpar (clean or fair trade) could only happen when household members demonstrated honesty in acknowledging women’s entrepreneurial skills and ambitions.
“She ate my work:” Women’s Work and Household Relations within the Plantation
Women plantation workers enjoyed a particular form of visibility in the tea industry. Most billboards in Darjeeling had an image of well-dressed smiling Nepali woman plantation worker engaged in effortless tea-plucking. Tourists who visited Darjeeling would find photo opportunities where local guides would ensure that women did not leave Darjeeling without a clichéd photo dressed like a tea-plucker with a doko (traditional basket) on her head. No male figures were present in the publicity material of the tea plantations.
Women plantation workers’ visibility was not just representational, it was accompanied by stereotypes about women’s work and their personalities. Plantation owners often fetishized women plantation workers as loyal and hardworking and men as idle and childish, denying the gendered labor recruitment pattern that resulted in making men unsuitable for plantation work, except in supervisory and managerial positions across the ranks. Such visibility was injurious; it complicated household relations when women workers’ husbands or other male members of the family were unemployed. Male family and community members envied women’s perceived financial freedom, and despite earnings women were constricted in money allocation and spending, i.e., maintaining a separate purse (see also Dolan 2001).
Women plantation workers’ social relations and their subjectivities were deeply impacted by both positive and negative connotations of the gendered meanings of their work. The politics of shaming also influenced their entrepreneurialism, both economic and cultural. Many women commented that their work was both an advantage and a disadvantage for them. The result of these gender ideologies and the effects of such subjective reflections were best revealed in household debates and interactions. It strained their conjugal relations and relationship with the extended family. The plantation pay, despite a major increase in 2011, was very little, and women reared chickens, and pigs if they had the space, or made raksi (local Nepali rice liquor) for sale to village men. They played ghumāuri to meet their household financial needs. Ghumāuri money was crucial for buying clothing, furniture, school supplies, and medicines in case of a major illness in the family, or during the festival season to buy gifts. Many women said that they saved money so that they could make everyone in their homes happy.
Out of the forty women plantation workers I interviewed regularly in the two plantations, twenty-nine women had husbands without regular work, five had husbands who had migrated to work elsewhere and sent remittances, and six women plantation workers’ husbands had work in the plantation. Regular employment put women at a disadvantage in household relations. I used to frequent Bimla’s house often in the evenings when she would come back from work. She was in her early forties and had started work in the plantation fifteen years ago when she eloped from an adjoining village and married Khim Bahadur. Khim Bahadur’s mother was a plantation employee and was retired; his father had already died. It was common practice in plantations to give employment to one member of a family in which there was a retired plantation worker. This was also a way for workers to retain the right of living in the plantation quarters. Khim Bahadur and Dāl Bahadur were two brothers, and their sister was already married and lived in another plantation.
Everyone in the family was happy when Khim Bahadur married Bimla, a girl from a neighboring plantation. Bimla became instrumental for the family to retain a regular source of income. Khim Bahadur worked as a cook in Goa (Western India) for six months in a year and spent the rest of the months at home. The family had meager earnings and Khim Bahadur’s mother took care of household work for her daughter-in-law, who worked outside the house in the plantation. Khim Bahadur and Dāl Bahadur’s relationship had declined tremendously after the former’s marriage. Dāl Bahadur was expecting to get a job in the plantation as his mother’s replacement, but there was low demand for men’s work. It was much easier for women to find work, even if it was of temporary nature, as an apprentice tea-plucker.
Like most unemployed youth, Dāl Bahadur was always playing Indian Carrom Board with his friends, but we used to chat a lot. We discussed films, TV shows, and life in the United States. Dāl Bahadur frequently asked me whether I knew about the migration of Nepali drivers to the U.S. The local village men at times also shared their frustrations. Dāl Bahadur and I were stuck in Kurseong at a bus stop one monsoon day. He asked me whether I liked Bimla, then asked me whether he could share a secret. I showed interest. He started talking about Khim Bahadur, portraying him as a simple man who did not understand Bimla’s tricks. “Bimla Bhauju (sister-in-law) thinks she is doing a lot for the family; she does not realize that she ate my work. Ama (mother) and Khim Dāju (elder brother) are always engaged in making her happy; no one cares about me. I am sure if I marry I will be economically dependent on Dāju and Bhauju; I cannot marry the girl I love. I am trying so hard to find work. Bimla Bhauju has no conscience. She should have tried to get me a job too, but she is very selfish.”
Dāl Bahadur was a very pleasant person, but fights in their household were common in the months when Khim Bahadur was back in Kurseong, having finished his six months in Goa. Fights took place during lunch time when Bimla was at work and Dāl Bahadur returned home for a meal and shower. Their mother tried in vain to stop them; she told me once, “I am so glad that Khim Bahadur’s dad was the only son, and all his sisters married outside this plantation, so there was no problem for me to work in the plantation.”
Gendered labor recruitment in the plantation created these tense situations in households. Women’s work outside the home was not a problem per se; but it had these negative consequences. Dāl Bahadur saw Bimla as opportunistic and street smart since he did not get the replacement job, implied by his comment in Kurseong, “she ate my work.” Whenever Dāl Bahadur was asked to feed the chickens or pigs he would not bother to do it; he would tell his mother that if Bimla gave all her money to the household they would no longer need to raise chickens. Bimla wanted to alleviate this feeling of animosity; Bimla always gave Dāl Bahadur clothes. She once told me, “I wish Dāl Bahadur could understand why I was recruited.” Plantation workers’ reputations were thus spoiled by their own family members. Gendered labor recruitment in plantations on the one hand gave women economic security, but at the same time created these household tensions.
The above example is not the only instance of where women faced adversities at home because of plantation recruitment patterns. In my time at the plantation, I spent a lot of time talking to male and female household members of the plantation workers. Pooja’s mother worked in the plantation tea-packing department and her father had died. Like many of her friends, Pooja had studied until middle school. She quit school after she failed the school’s 10th standard board exam. This was a common feature in the plantation; many women studied until they got to the board exams. Pooja’s brothers also had the same educational level. Her elder brother had worked at a pharmacy in Kurseong town but had lost his job after the pharmacy started hiring better educated men. Pooja’s younger brother Rakesh was twenty, just a year younger than she. Rakesh was unemployed, and was very uncertain about what he should do next. He had also recently failed the Indian army’s recruitment test.
Pooja’s daily routine was to cook, clean, and run errands for their household. She used to knit well and took orders from neighbors, making sweaters and socks for the winter to earn cash. One afternoon she had made plans with her friends to go to the town and asked her younger brother Rakesh to cook the evening meal. Rakesh’s routine in the afternoon was to play carom with Dāl Bahadur and some other local boys. When we were eating lunch, Pooja made this request to Rakesh, at which he immediately replied, “I am not going to cook rice in this house till you are married or you get work in the plantation.” Pooja replied, saying, “Maybe that day will never come and I will spend my life making rice for you and your wife.” These sorts of exchanges were common in homes between siblings. Along with the metaphor of the organic husband to designate the complexity of household politics, plantation women often worried about good marriage prospects, as reflected in Pooja’s comment “that day will never come.”
Many elderly plantation workers sometimes saved money to send to their sons who had migrated to Delhi or Mumbai to work in restaurants. Dayamani used her ghumāuri savings to send money to her son. Her son complained that his salary from working as a cook in a private home did not leave enough money to buy him winter clothes. Dayamani’s daughter, on the other hand, wanted to take a beautician’s course, for which her mother never gave her money. Dayamani told me that if her son left that job in Delhi and came back to the plantation her household worries were going to increase, or he would just waste time with his peers. It was best to keep him away. She hoped that her daughter would find a good match or that she would get the replacement work when she retired.
The stereotypes that were associated with women plantation workers affected the way they could/could not negotiate with their employers. Sita was a nurse at the hospital dispensary; her pay in 2007 (Rs. 1,800) was higher than an average worker (a plucker). Her mother-in-law and father-in-law were both ex-employees of Phulbāri plantation. Her husband worked for a government concern in Siliguri. She was the only one in her family who worked in the plantation. Sita was chosen to receive nurses’ training because her father-in-law worked in an important position at the plantation office. Sita was envied by other plantation workers because she enjoyed the benefits of being the daughter-in-law of an influential man. Her father-in-law was close to the present plantation owner, and hence, she got the job. Sita was also in the Joint Body and she did many hours of work apart from her nursing duty. This family was better off than Dāl Bahadur’s, they had a bigger house and Sita’s husband had no brothers. But Sita’s son was a cause of great anxiety in the household. Unlike Sita’s daughter, her son was not interested in studies. He watched television all day. There was a tendency among many families to be protective of their sons, as they were anxious.
Sita told me that she was scared; her son Kumud would not find employment either at the plantation or elsewhere. Her anxiety was more about the quality of job that her son would get, since her family was better off than the other plantation workers’ families. She told me one day:
I worry that Kumud will stand nowhere when we are old. Lipika (the daughter) will be fine; she will get a job as a teacher or get married. If Kumud does not study he will be given a field job, which he will dislike. I cannot fight like other women; I cannot create a scene for Kumud. The owner likes me because I always respect him and because I am not chuchchi; it worries me so much.
Plantation work and recruitment patterns had created many complications for women plantation workers, whether they worked as low-paid pluckers or as nurses in the plantation health center. On the one hand, they enjoy the fruits of assured employment, but on the other, their actions were underwritten by the motive to defy common stereotypes about them. Sita had a comparatively better job, but one that put her at a disadvantage, especially because she was seen as docile by the plantation owner and she saw herself as not being chuchchi; different from an average plantation worker who is chuchchi. Gendered cultural stereotypes were often kept alive by women plantation workers themselves. If her son had been good in studies he would have had a chance at gainful employment, but now he was dependent on Sita’s bargaining power, which she was hesitant to exercise because of the unwritten terms of her own employment. The plantation owner had once told me that Sita was a very presentable woman, she had a pleasant personality, she was also very judicious, and was not a troublemaker. The way she gained visibility in front of the employer decreased her bargaining power and created tension within her household. Women plantation workers like Sita were always careful not to upset their young boys because as she told me, “If there is no peace in the home they will start using drugs.”
Plantation surveillance and employment tactics put great pressure on women’s household politics. Households that had a women member already working in the plantation had a difficult time finding work for other members. The pay, which was approximately a little more than a dollar a day, was highly insufficient for putting children through school. Most plantation workers’ children had a primary- and middle-school education. High school and college were expensive and were unaffordable for most families. For women, seasonal plucking work in a plantation was always available, but for male youth, the pressure to find work was immense. Male youth were extremely envious of management officials, who were mostly Bihari, Bengali, or Punjabi2 college graduates from elsewhere or upper-class and upper-caste Nepali men with good connections to the local political party.
During my stay in Phulbāri, a group of male youth assaulted the senior manager. The manager suffered head injuries and was admitted to the hospital. These kinds of sporadic incidents of violence were common and mostly performed by young male youth belonging to the plantation. The father of one of the Nepali managers whom I interviewed was murdered by another unemployed plantation male youth. The paucity of employment for men and lack of proper educational opportunities put great strain on plantation households and women plantation workers, which resulted in these occasional outbursts. In addition, during my stay, there was often gossip about violence between spouses and alcohol-related abuse.
There was also great anxiety around sharing/pooling of existing resources within the family. Women often reared chickens, made rice wine, and knitted during the weekends to make money. They usually sold these in the plantation villages. Lachmi didi usually woke up at 5 a.m. and lit the oven in her kitchen to make the morning tea. She also boiled water to make rice for lunch, which she and her husband took with them. Her daughter Mala would leave for work (she worked as a cook in the assistant manager’s house). The two sons would still be sleeping. The elder one had just returned from Delhi with his wife who was expecting. After washing, Lachmi entered the living room where the younger son was sleeping. She told him, “Ramesh wake up and at least do things around the house, feed the chickens and make sure they don’t flee or the neighbors’ dogs will eat them.” She then turned to me and told me:
At least the girls find work in the plantation, if not full time, part time work plucking tea in the neighboring plantations. But my sons worry me. My elder son went to Lucknow to work as a cook. There he discovered that other madeshi3 cooks threatened them to leave so that their own people could join. Even if our sons travel outside, they cannot find safe employment. There are no opportunities for them, and if they sit idle for too long, they take to drugs. There are so many managers and office workers hired from outside the plantation; why can’t our sons be trained to work in the plantation? This kind of system would at least motivate them to study. Our sons have no future.
Ramesh hung out with some union guys and Lachmi hoped that the party leaders in the union would help him find a job. Lachmi’s feelings were representative of the anxiety within households in the plantation.
Male youth that I had befriended in the two plantation often asked me this standard question, “Didi, hāmi driver ko kām pāondina? America mā, teta to dherai car cha? (Elder sister, will we not get a driver’s job in America where there are so many cars?”). Widespread nepotism in the plantations, along with fewer opportunities for men’s work, resulted in mounting tensions within households about men’s economic future. Most household conflicts were centered upon supplementing household income and securing the economic future of their families. In Sonākheti, Phulbāri, and other plantations the gendered labor recruitment resulted in disillusionment of male youth.
The plantation owner’s constant emphasis on the “strong women of Sonākheti,” and his public exposure of negative feelings about the capability of Nepali men only furthered plantation workers’ tension about the future of their children and complicated their household relations. The owner was very conscious of his support for the “ethnic” needs of his workers, though he frequently used ethnic stereotypes of “childishness” and “immaturity” to discriminate against Nepali men, when hiring male workers for office or supervisory positions. He built temples for workers but did not recruit local youth in the plantation, except to do weeding work.4
Male family members of plantation workers tended to see their wives/daughters/sisters as more privileged. In many families women had regular income and men did occasional wage work in town or they would be unemployed. Jang Bahadur and Gita had frequent fights over their son’s future. Jang Bahadur had no employment; he sometimes did part-time work in the plantation. His wife Gita, although sympathetic toward his unemployed status, sometimes could not control her frustrations about her husband’s status. One evening when I was staying with them, I returned from a day’s work in the field. Jang Bahadur was drunk, and Gita was giving him a piece of her mind. I did not enter their home and stood outside to talk to their neighbor, Thule, who incidentally was also unemployed. Gita shouted to Jang Bahadur, “Why can’t you sell some of the raksi (rice wine), why do you drink it all with your friends, do you know that my thikā (wage) is insufficient?” Alchoholism among men and women was common. Yet making alcohol also was a way to stretch the family income, selling it to neighbors and friends.
In many households, men helped in making alcohol to be sold in the plantation. Bindu was an average plucker, but her family was better off because her husband was a retired army man. Her husband received a pension. Bindu’s husband used his pension money to improve their home and marry off her two daughters. In his spare time, he made raksi (local rice wine) and reared pigs. If husbands had regular jobs they were much more supportive of women and helped out at home. When I lived in their house, Bindu’s husband would make meals.
Household Relations in the Cooperative (Sānu Krishak Sansthā)
As evident from my ethnographic examination of household relations in the plantation, Fair Trade activities were far removed from worker’s everyday lives. Household conflicts centered on the dim employment prospects of male family members. In the cooperative, household relations were affected by the increased visibility of Women’s Wing members and their business plan, which went against their dominant image as housewives. Tension was particularly strong in the homes of women tea farmers who were active Women’s Wing members and were going to town to sell produce for the Women’s Wing’s business.
In the cooperative, women’s image as housewives had naturalized “home” as the sphere of work for women. Women tea farmers faced problems because of their active participation in the Fair Trade activities of the cooperative. While family members did not object to women taking out loans, they complained if women went to too many meetings. The differential politics of class related to women’s visibility in the public sphere affected gendered work struggles within and outside the household.
Another notable difference in household relations in the cooperative was the effect of socioeconomic inequality among cooperative members and the way it affected women’s position within households. Gendered mobility politics worked through household politics. Women in the cooperative area had different backgrounds depending on their socioeconomic position. While caste was an important marker of identity in Darjeeling, socioeconomic standing (class) played an important factor in shaping people’s identity. The cooperative neighborhoods had a majority of Rai, Tamang, and Chettri (Nepali ethnic groups). Economic inequities were based on education, family wealth, access to political power, government employment (whether in the army or local government offices), and size of land and affording hired labor.
Active Women’s Wing members who regularly came to meetings were comparatively less wealthy compared to women who were interested in loans but never came to the meetings. I also observed that husbands of women who were active in the Women’s Wing mostly worked as wage laborers in town or farmed at home. Women whose husbands had gainful employment, large holdings of land, or successful business ventures apart from selling tea in the cooperative were more apprehensive of participating in the meetings. The latter were also not ashamed when they defaulted on microcredit loan repayments.
For instance, Ashika, the wife of a shopkeeper and middleman in the cooperative area, was no longer a Women’s Wing member. I knew from my interactions with other senior Women’s Wing members that she had been a very active member in the initial years and also took out loans. After a while her husband’s shop started doing really well and she left Women’s Wing. When I asked Ashika to describe her experience in the Women’s Wing she made the following comments:
When the Women’s Wing started out we were encouraged to do social [emphasis mine] things. We campaigned in the villages against alcoholism, encouraged pregnant women to go to the hospitals, campaigned for polio awareness among new mothers and did ICDS child development work.5 We did a lot of good work. But today the Women’s Wing is only interested in loans; women have become very money minded and that is why their household members object to their activities.
It was ironic that Ashika ran her husband’s shop when he was not in the village. The shop was in their house. She would switch on her TV and sit in the shop the entire day. She nevertheless blamed Women’s Wing members’ household conflicts on their “money minded” attitude. She repeated what many older men and middlemen said when asked about their thoughts on the Women’s Wing. One of the male cooperative members told me that business was not a woman’s thing; that is why it is bound to fail.
The active members of the Women’s Wing mostly came from households with smaller land-holdings, or households that did not have enough tea bushes and felt the need to generate income from other sources. These women were interested in taking loans and usually returned them to ensure that they could take more loans each year. Women from neighborhoods which were not near the serviceable road that ran through the cooperative area became most active in the matters of the Women’s Wing because they we more exploited by middlemen. At times there were exceptions—women from supportive wealthy homes who could spare some time from agricultural or other household chores were also active. As occurs in any organization, some women were more articulate than others, and this was not necessarily tied to education or wealth.
When I asked members why they joined the Women’s Wing, most women frankly admitted that they wanted to access loans by joining the Women’s Wing. When I asked why they stayed on in the Women’s Wing, women explained that they now felt a sense of camaraderie, while also admitting the possibility of taking part in future income-generation schemes of the Women’s Wing. The most common response was, “We love the fact that at least once a month we can forget about our homes; now we know people on both sides of the hill. We learn so many new things, get training.” During interviews, many women mentioned that they became members so that their daughters could learn new business skills and get service kaam (work). One often repeated explanation was, “Times are changing, and women need to learn new skills to keep up. I hope my daughter will also join when she is older so that she can go for different training camps organized by the NGO.” Non-members or ex-members usually said they liked the Women’s Wing but did not have time, very similar to responses of women who had left the Women’s Wing. Another important observation was that single women who got married to better (well-to-do) homes left the Women’s Wing, even if they were active before marriage. Age was important, but economic inequities outweighed age in determining spontaneity of women’s involvement in the Women’s Wing.
These differences between women also affected household relationships. During my fieldwork I stayed in a combination of households to see how socioeconomic differences influenced household relations. Economic difference affected the way men and women were socially evaluated in their communities, which in turn affected their household relations. For instance, in one wealthy household the daughters-in-law, Poonam and Rajni, were never allowed by their mother-in-law to become members of the Women’s Wing. In my conversations with the mother-in-law, who was never a member of Women’s Wing herself, she told me that her daughters-in-law did not require loans, and they would rather spend that time doing household chores. “Our family’s daughters-in-law do not need loans. There is much to do at home.”
After some time, the youngest daughter-in-law, Poonam, decided to become a member of the Women’s Wing. She was the more outspoken of the two daughters-in-law. Her husband did not have regular employment, and she decided that she needed to make some savings for the future. Poonam’s decision was not welcomed in the household; her husband was also indifferent. There were arguments over her impudence. Poonam’s father-in-law frequently cracked jokes at dinner time about the failure of the Women’s Wing’s milk business and ineffectiveness to dissuade Poonam from joining the Women’s Wing. Poonam’s father-in-law had five acres of land, almost three times the average holding size in the area. He was also a loyal supplier of one of the middlemen from this region.
Poonam’s father-in-law, like many other wealthy families, had a material interest in defaming the Women’s Wing because he wanted his individual milk business to survive. Jokes about Women’s Wing’s business ventures were common in wealthy families. Sometimes, even women who had benefited from Women’s Wing microcredit schemes earlier and now had more stable income sources denigrated women Women’s Wing members as “bāthi,” implying that active Women’s Wing members had transgressed the boundaries of existing social norms in the basti (non-plantation village area). These rumors of failure were damaging for the confidence of Women’s Wing members and their family members who were already doubtful about their daughters’ or wives’ new ventures.
Poonam’s family was not the only one with this problem. Women from families with sufficient income were always reluctant to allow their women outside the homes. In contrast, women who felt the need to increase their income would be most active in the Women’s Wing so that they could take more loans. They would be regular at meetings and would pay their dues on time.
Household Conflicts in Sānu Krishak Sansthā
I was awakened from my sleep on January 12, 2006, by a loud altercation between Manju and her brothers. Manju was the most active Women’s Wing member of her neighborhood. She was in charge of helping the milk business along with Dipika. The night before, she had come to know that Kabita, another Women’s Wing member who took the milk collected in the village (by Manju and Dipika) to Darjeeling town, had threatened the Women’s Wing to start her own business. Kabita was upset when she was requested by Women’s Wing members to give another economically struggling woman a chance to go to town and learn the skills of selling milk and vegetables.
Manju was extremely upset because she thought Kabita was betraying the Women’s Wing’s objective of a rotating collective business. Kabita, it seemed, was very upset that she would lose her turn to take the milk to town eight months after she took charge of the Women’s Wing’s business.6 Kabita believed that not everyone should get a turn since her economic condition was not good. The rotation system was institutionalized by the Women’s Wing so that every economically struggling woman in the Women’s Wing would get a chance to learn business skills. So when Kabita was requested by other Women’s Wing members to give up her position, she took it personally. Manju’s anger at this incident was compounded by her brother’s comments. When I lay awake in my bed, I heard her elder brother Dipesh sarcastically saying:
You should not feel frustrated now; I had warned you before that Kabita will take advantage of you. It was the Women’s Wing’s aim to make sure that women stand on their own feet; well at least one of them has. You should be satisfied and Women’s Wing should also stop this business since it is not working out. If you cannot digest this reality you all are not fit to do business. That is why the cooperative is not giving Women’s Wing Fair Trade money this year.
Manju’s brothers and their friends in the locality were otherwise very supportive of the Women’s Wing’s business and helped them with accounts. I had seen them defending their sisters when people made fun of their business plan. Manju’s brother also used the money Manju borrowed from the microcredit loans. They nevertheless made fun of Manju because she was spending a lot of time outside the house going to meetings, going to the town, and visiting people’s homes campaigning them to give their milk to the Women’s Wing business. Manju and Dipika would hold meetings in the village to make sure that villagers gave their milk to Women’s Wing and not the middlemen who mixed it with water after buying milk from villagers and sold it in town at double the price. Manju snapped back:
Don’t talk to me like that. The next time you are upset because the middleman cheated you with your goats, I will remind you about your failures. It is common for beginners to make mistakes in business, but we want to do swachcha vyāpār (clean/fair trade). You must understand that Women’s Wing does not want to be like middlemen; we want profit but not by exploiting others. So try to understand what the Women’s Wing is trying to do. Do you stop taking your goats to town during Dashāi (annual festival) because you were cheated by one middleman last year? Why do you want us to stop? I think you are paying too much attention to village rumors. Try to apply your brain and see what the Women’s Wing is trying to do. And where would you get money to buy the goats if I was not a Women’s Wing member.
The exchange between Manju and her brother typified interactions between active Women’s Wing members and their families. Among my thirty key women informants in the cooperative community consisting of members of the Women’s Wing, most commented that they do not go to town regularly and face opposition in their homes if they spend a long time outside their homes. I asked all of the women I interviewed whether they needed to get permission if they were going to go to meetings; most of them said yes. Women’s work inside the home was considered materially and symbolically important to maintain inter-household distinctions within the village.
Socioeconomic issues underlined Manju’s altercation with her brother. Manju’s family was sufficiently well-to-do. She lived with her aged father and two elder brothers. She had a sister who was married. They had a large land holding, but tea was not the main produce of the family. Manju took out loans and gave it to her brothers for buying young goats for their animal husbandry business. She also ran a small shop from her house selling cigarettes, soap, and biscuits. She told me that she paid back her loans from the earnings of this small shop but her brothers also gave back a large share from the sale of their goats and ginger during season. Because Manju’s family was comparatively wealthy her brothers frequently asked her to give up her Women’s Wing work. The standard discourse was, “You don’t need to.” Socioeconomic differences were manifest by restricting women’s visibility to the household. Upwardly mobile families were especially conscious of the movement of their women outside the household.
Men were also very self-conscious if their wives or sisters were working outside the home. While I was staying at Kabita’s house, her husband, Harka Bahadur, often asked me, especially if he had had too much raksi (rice wine) to drink, what I thought about their household situation. In the beginning I did not understand what he meant by “household situation.” Gradually, I mastered village gossip; I understood his self-consciousness and concern about the reputation of his household. I continued pretending not to understand, and finally he elaborated, “You know Kabita goes out in the morning to the market and I stay at home. Do you think that is okay? How do you feel about that?” I told him that to me it was normal. He should not feel bad about it because Kabita was earning for him and their two sons. My participant observation in the jungās (village vehicles) while traveling back and forth from the town also helped me to triangulate these frustrations among men whose wives were active Women’s Wing members.
Kabita and Harka Bahadur were looked down upon because apparently they had violent fights. According to male cooperative members, Harka Bahadur apparently drank too much. Kabita was seen as cunning because she went to town often and was not afraid to argue with male members of the community. Even her closest neighbors looked down upon her. She also had a smaller agricultural plot and her household output of tea was little, so she had much less income compared to households with large holdings of tea.
Harka Bahadur knew that people talked badly about his wife. But there was nothing he could do. Kabita was smart, she could sell things in town, and the two did not have enough tea bushes to just rely on tea. Harka Bahadur also helped his wife, collecting vegetables from the village and packing them in a bag in the wee hours of the morning, cooking for his sons, and taking care of their small plot of land. Harka Bahadur had failed to secure regular wage work in town. When I stayed with Harka Bahadur and Kabita, he used to call his female cousin to make lunch for me in Kabita’s absence because women serving food to a guest was the norm. I always requested him to let me cook my own food, which he appreciated. This saved him from being ashamed about his wife not serving his guests.
Household conflicts could not be seen just as an interaction between spouses; conversations within the household were often influenced by rumors in the cooperative community and actions of the cooperative board. Harka Bahadur was sidelined in the cooperative because he drank too much, had little education, and also because his wife had a bad reputation as being cunning. On the other hand, Hiren, the secretary of the cooperative, was also very cunning, but he was not ostracized like Harka Bahadur. His wife had no reputation and was not a member of Women’s Wing. He was educated. He probably did not drink as much as Harka Bahadur. He also had a job at a government school. Because of his class position people did not speak badly of him. However, he was criticized heavily by Women’s Wing members because he played an active part in the cooperative’s decision to not share the FLO premium with the Women’s Wing.
People did not speak well about Punita, another active Women’s Wing member. She was also nearing thirty and was not married, which was a major cause for gossip. Punita was very independent minded and had a very sharp tongue, but people talked about her also because she was an active member of the Women’s Wing. Punita’s family had little land. Her parents farmed and her brother was trying to get into the Indian army each year. Even her brother was uncomfortable that she was still not married and reminded her occasionally that he would not get a wife if she did not marry. Punita had told me numerous times that these comments in her household did not bother her anymore. She would not marry because she loved watching TV in the afternoons and was concerned that her future husband might not let her. Women’s Wing members who were single were very apprehensive of marrying men from the neighborhood for the fear of being subject to the norms of being a “housewife.”
These kinds of wealth and gender inequalities were regular in the cooperative area. Well-to-do men and their wives always maintained composure, but community members constantly scrutinized economically struggling families. Gender ideologies survived through these gendered discourses about men, women, and their households. Women’s reputations affected their husband’s participation in the cooperative and their own household relations. These gendered politics were challenged by women tea farmers in the cooperative. Women plantation workers on the other hand are not able to challenge the domination of the management (and male co-workers) even in spite of greater freedom to meet outside the house.
Household Politics and Public Discourses of “Risk”
It was because of this gendered class politics that active Women’s Wing members felt vulnerable. They blamed this not only on their husbands and family members but also on the cooperative and community who held on to gender ideologies about women’s work. A recurring theme in women’s narratives was a discussion of risk. Women used the English word risk but when pronouncing it, it sounded more like “riks.” The theme of “riks” was a way for women to talk about the gendered struggles they continued to face in their community and households. Through a discussion about risk, women found a way to connect their past sacrifices (before the cooperative was formed) with the present ones to justify their entrepreneurialism and activism within the cooperative.
At the time of my research, women thought that their biggest risk came from male middlemen who dominated the trade of produce and milk from the cooperative villages and were related to their families. Since their families had depended on middlemen for many years, women were having a hard time convincing their family members about their business venture. This risk was compounded when their family members did not realize or object to the extent of middlemen’s exploitation of villagers (like Manju’s brothers). Women told me that they had always been forced to take more risk for their families and communities without much support. By “riks,” women not only implied greater workload but also the increased possibility of losing their reputations, especially if they were poor and became active in the Women’s Wing. Some of the important members of the cooperative were middlemen who collected vegetables and produce from the neighborhoods at very low prices and sold them in town for profit as detailed in chapter 5.
After the Women’s Wing fought with the cooperative over the FLO money for their business plan, powerful men in the village spread rumors that the Women’s Wing business was bound to fail because women were inexperienced. Poonam’s father-in-law is one such man. Like Poonam’s father-in-law, other Goālās also found out that the milk depot in town to which the Women’s Wing was selling their milk. The Goālās told the depot owner that women were disorganized and were unethical. Women tea farmers now constantly felt they were at risk because their reputations were at stake. Their own family members at times felt the pressure of being loyal to some middlemen questioning women’s skills. This created household anxiety. However, if women tea farmers succumbed to these rumors and stopped their business, they would risk losing their chance to convince villagers that they could conduct their successful business. Their failure would ensure that the cooperative never gave them FLO money for their projects.
In the December 2006 Women’s Wing meeting, the driver of the car that carried the Women’s Wing procured milk to town was called to a meeting to settle accounts. He never arrived with his car at the designated time to take the Women’s Wing produce and milk to town. This was a major issue because of the perishability of milk and vegetables. Though he was very helpful to the Women’s Wing’s business, his immediate public response was to hide his delay. The car owner quickly added: “You women are blaming me for your business not doing well but you all do not even know how to talk to the milk depot owner in town. If you knew that then your business would have been running smoothly.” The comment implied that village women were inexperienced about how to conduct business. At this Manju quickly responded,
Thanks so much for taking time out to come here and for helping us to realize our mistakes. However, it is also my duty to remind all you people from this neighborhood that no milkman was offering you Rs. 8 per liter of milk before we started this business. We don’t have a pliable road, so please remember the days when you had to throw away your extra milk in frustration for not getting a good price from the middlemen in other villages. None of you encouraged your household members to start a business [emphasis mine]. Now that we are doing well, you tell our brothers and fathers that Women’s Wing members have become bāthi. We took a great risk by starting this business so that you all did not have to waste your milk and we women could also learn how to do organized business. We shell out our own money when the customers in the town delay their payments, just to make sure that our business is fair, and that you are getting your money on time. Please have some appreciation for the risk that we are taking here. We are here to learn, so let us have some productive discussion about how we can sell your milk more efficiently, instead of trying to create problems in our homes.
Reminders of risk-taking for the community were regular in meetings and in my personal conversations with women. Manju frequently reminded her brother (as in the last example) about the efforts of the Women’s Wing to do swachcha vyāpār (clean/fair trade). Women told me that the cooperative was a microcosm of society where women’s work outside their family farms was criticized. The conflicts they faced in the household were compounded by the attitude of comparatively wealthy board members and their wives.
On March 16, 2007, there was a general strike in Darjeeling called by the GNLF. On the day of the strike women risked going to town to sell the milk. I met them in town and waited with them beside the train station. I quietly listened to their conversation, which again centered on the topic of risk. In spite of a strike women tea farmers risked coming to town because they wanted to capture the market there. Women did not want potential customers to feel that they were not serious about the business. There were no cars running in Darjeeling that day. All schools were shut and all shops were closed. During such strikes, the government allowed only emergency service vehicles to use the road, which included emergency food supplies like milk. So the women made their own “emergency milk duty” poster and convinced the driver to take them to town. Apparently, all the other male milk vendors from hamlets within the cooperative and the driver were hesitant to travel to town. The men were not sure about the circumstances in town. They feared they would get caught by the police and would have to pay bribes to the cops. The Women’s Wing members said that because they agreed to pay up for any monetary loss the driver agreed to come to town.
Binu told me later, “There are lots of men who come regularly to town and know what a strike entails, but none would come for the fear of being caught. It was because the women took the monetary risk that the men could all sell their milk. Women are always asked for more sacrifices in the home and community; yet there is no faith in their capacity to do big business.” She felt pride and frustration at the same time. She was proud because they were able to sell their milk and frustrated because whenever the women’s group decided to start a new business venture their business integrity and capacity to take new ventures was questioned. Men mobilized existing gender ideologies in the community to express doubt about whether simple village women would be able to conduct big business like men. Poonam’s father-in-law kept telling her that joining the Women’s Wing was a waste of time because their business was a failure. Manju’s brothers made fun of her when she spent time at the Women’s Wing. Binu told me that men, who perceive women as potential competitors, use these statements to show concern. In reality such comments are meant to create a lack of confidence about the Women’s Wing’s business. Once the women got their share of the FLO money, such concern had quickly turned into hostility. Active Women’s Wing women were now defamed with negative representations like “bāthi and chuchchi,”7 which made their household relations tense.
Women farmers never interfered with the business of the middlemen who were friends of their male family members or their kin. Wealthy middlemen were active in the cooperative too. They had more land and kept very good relations with families who were well off. Class relations in the village worked through these inter-household ties. Women felt frustrated when these men defamed Women’s Wing members. Women’s Wing members who were engaged in small entrepreneurial activities felt that they had taken all kinds of risk in their community starting from selling illegal tea, to taking out microcredit loans to support their families and now in this business, which the male middlemen were out to destroy. They were willing to take risks for the men, such as on a day of the strike. Such compassion could not be expected from the men. Women told me that they took risks but never let their temper overtake their diplomacy. They knew the motive of all men but never got into any kind of altercation with them because it went against notions of honor. Whenever they felt cornered, they found friendly ways to get their point across. In such a circumstance women felt that they could not let their group dissolve. It was through this group that women could critique male dominance and the use of their labor. The hope was that the group’s continuation and success would convince their household members that they were on to something important. It would convince family members that their wives, daughters, and sisters were trying to accomplish something important for their household and community by trying to raise household earnings by cutting out the middlemen.
When women took loans, they felt that they took a risk due to various reasons. Their husbands and other family members used this money for their own use, but the responsibility of returning the money fell on the women. Since the Women’s Wing women had been taking out loans for the last seven years, they felt that they were being exposed to the risk of running their homes all alone. Manju had once told me, “Men just go out, earn a little bit of money and think that they are the ones running the household for which their wives should be grateful to them. The truth is that wives run the household, they stretch that little amount of money and make things look okay. It is because of the effort of the women that their husbands can feel a sense of pride which is highly misplaced!” Sunita didi, another committed Women’s Wing member, once told me, “The work inside the home is rarely seen, that is the nature of our work!” After my extended interview I realized that by “work inside the home” Sunita didi not only meant physical household labor, but also the difficult process of negotiating identity and acceptance within the household. Women whose families owned cattle had a common joke, “We get the grass, he takes the milk,” to describe the inequality of resource sharing within cooperative households. Women spent a lot of time cutting grass for their cattle and most of them hated this work. This comment implied how men enjoyed the fruits of women’s labor.
Women tea farmers also used Fair Trade trainings and public events to address household issues. During the Fair Trade Janajāgaran Kāryakram (People’s Awareness Campaign detailed in the next chapter), Women’s Wing members made speeches about the significance of Fair Trade and urged people to remember why they were getting development money from Fair Trade. Somewhere in these speeches Women’s Wing members always mentioned that they were also trying to practice Fair Trade (swachcha vyāpār). Sabita mentioned, “When all of you trust and respect the Women’s Wing and value it as much as the cooperative then our community will see true Fair Trade happen. Every household member should send all their women to the Women’s Wing so that they can all learn business skills so vital in today’s world. Don’t make fun of your wives if they spend time in meetings; don’t make their lives difficult.” I had recorded many public speeches that women made in the cooperative in which they made these moral appeals to the cooperative community to pay attention to how women were treated in their homes. In this particular speech Sabita related women’s household relations and Fair Trade.
Gendered resource politics was thus compounded by economic hierarchies making economically struggling families and their women more vulnerable to the effects of inequality. Sunita, Kabita, Binu, Punita, and Shanta had various economic disadvantages. Manju faced great opposition in her family because her brothers thought she did not need to take loans. When Manju’s family did not need loans, she took a loan in her name and gave that to other women in the village who had not become Women’s Wing members. Shanta and Sunita complained that their husbands were giving them a hard time in the community after the Women’s Wing floated their business plan. Comparatively wealthy women also deplored Women’s Wing members, saying that they were money-minded. As I detailed earlier, the wife of a wealthy shopkeeper in one community who was previously involved with the Women’s Wing told me, “These days women are just interested in loans, in our days we were doing social things. We were not business minded.” When the Women’s Wing started they were not involved in microcredit but did health campaigns, campaigns against alcoholism, which were common programs, run by the Indian government (see Sharma 2008). When microcredit started everyone welcomed loans and the only way to get one was by making their daughters, wives, or mothers members of the Women’s Wing. Some women dropped out a couple of years later, mostly because they had defaulted or their families now made enough money from selling tea. By this time, the local panchāyats also started lending money to people in the locality. These wealthy ex-Women’s Wing members were the most critical of the present Women’s Wing members, implying that it was not appropriate for women to be interested in business. These women spoiled the reputation of the Women’s Wing’s present members through village gossip.
In their monthly meetings women often spoke of solving the “household problem.” In the January meeting, Punita raised her hand when the Women’s Wing president was deciding on the meeting agenda. She said that women now had to take greater risks, and the fault lay with the Women’s Wing members. She requested women not to be dumb/lāti. She urged them to go home and convince their household members that business was not a bad thing. It was all for the community. Premlila, another Women’s Wing member, mentioned “Many of our community’s problems were because of household issues. People do not understand that household work (sakaune kaam) is also like running a business.”
Some women farmers identified that riks was systemic due to the barriers to women’s economic freedom, as Nita explains:
You know how these NGO brothers talk about riks to us, they tell us we should pay up on time and not being able to do so will harm our future loan-taking ability. I say we are the ones who really understand riks, we have to return the money, it is us women; we have always taken riks for our community.
Women used the word riks creatively to draw attention to the inequities, some of which have escalated along with new economic opportunities. In their daily discourse, loan-taking women identified several aspects to the notion of riks. Sheila reminded me that: “we frequently have to take risks; now the task of household procurement (sakaune kaam) has become risky.” Instances like this were noted in regular conversation where women invoked the notion of riks.
Through their various acts of cultural entrepreneurialism women tea farmers tried to show how male power worked through the linkages between community and household relations. By publicly talking about the “household problem” during Fair Trade trainings women exposed their household anxieties as will be demonstrated in the next chapter.
Consequences of Differential Visibilities of Women’s Work
Deborah Elliston writes that household relations emerge “as sites central in decision-making about laboring projects and as the moral and affective centers structuring the ascription of meaning to labor activities” (Elliston 2004, 610). These micro-contexts of everyday life become the testing ground for judging the effectiveness of ethical regimes for addressing structural gendered and socioeconomic inequalities in certified communities and promoting everyday sustainability.
In recent years the household studies literature has emphasized the study of intra-household relations to understand the consequences of women’s bargaining power within the household (Jha 2004). Kabeer stresses that the “visibility and extent of women’s gainful work” within households remains important to arrive at conclusions about women’s bargaining power within households (1994, 110−11). In her more recent work, Kabeer emphasizes that women’s agency (read in her study as the ability to join public sphere) is not only influenced by particular household relations but to a large extent influenced by the social milieu in which households are immersed. Both Kabeer (2000) and Fernandes (1997) call attention to looking at gender identities in households in conjunction with class, caste, or immigrant identity politics of the community in question. In this chapter, I have looked at household politics simultaneously with socioeconomic inequities in the community to understand the significance of women tea farmers’ political action in the public sphere and their household politics. Women plantation workers and women tea farmers both live lives negotiating their respective social reputations with trying to cope with the growing economic concerns of their families—balancing economic and cultural entrepreneurialism. While Fair Trade−related economic activities affected women’s household relations more directly in the cooperative, in the plantation, women’s household relations were not affected in any way to Fair Trade. While in the cooperative women tea farmers used Fair Trade−related public events to draw attention to structural issues within the household that devalues women’s labor, entrepreneurialism in the community, and in the plantation, household matters were kept secret. My findings in this chapter finds resonance in the work of feminists economists (Iversen 2003) advancing the idea that to develop a more robust understanding of women’s capabilities one must address women’s power to bargain within households.