Women’s Lives Today

 As discussed in other sections within this broader work on women tea plantation lives, women were chosen because “the crucial labour-intensive, routine and repetitive nature of the task of plucking of tea leaves was said to be quintessentially feminine, requiring nimble fingers of the women.”^[1] Beyond this sexist and misogynist notion that the colonial plantation owners ascribed to, they could also pay women significantly less than their male counterparts. Until the Equal Remuneration Act of 1975, women could legally be paid less than men, even after independence from British rule. Dutta pulls from literary works, plays, and songs that reference the difficult life of women tea workers, emphasizing the importance of unconventional sources in compiling the history of a group truly on the margins.

In terms of labor conditions today, rather than the historiographies that led to them, researchers have conducted interviews with women tea workers to determine their role on plantations and quality of life. Researchers Rajbangshi and Nambiar investigated the social conditions that affected the physical health of women tea workers.^[2] They conducted their research in Assam with focus group discussions with 134 women. All women expressed the effects of poverty on their health, among other aspects of their lives. The women in these groups were also illiterate or school drop outs and expressed the importance of their children’s education. However, their children often have to drop out as well to supplement the household income, perpetuating a generational vulnerability. Once again, the surveyed women explained how their opinions were not valued or considered both in the home and at work. Regarding how management treats, them one woman said,

“‘We are not valued. We are small people and they [management and supervisors] are big people, and they will only speak with big people. We would have discussed our problems [with them] if sometimes they [would] speak with us.’”^[3]

This constant dismissal devalued their work, and the women were engaged in labor constantly, only resting if they were sleeping. Mondays through Saturdays were spent working on the plantation, with domestic labor performed after work, and Sundays were an entire day of either unpaid labor for the plantation or for their household. The women also discussed their inhumane working conditions, with no latrines or hand washing stations, no protective gear against pesticides or plants. One woman recalls,

“‘We do not wear gloves. They [management] don’t give us. We sprinkle [urea/pesticides] with hands. Hands get swollen and fingers burn. If a thorn pricks, then it burns. You have seen, how thorny it is?’”^[4]

This leaves women tea workers “trapped in a vicious cycle of ill-health, job insecurity, and penury.”^[5]

Marginalization and Resistance

Women tea workers were unable to flee becuase of the threat of punishment, whether the threat of sexual violence or reporting them to the police for breaching contract.^[6] Given how constrained their lives are in the face of punishment, physical or penal, these women’s lives exist entirely at their workplace. They sleep, work, and live all in the same spaces. Both the workplace and their home lives have extremely gendered labor divisions, no rest from this inequality. In Banerjee’s thesis, both the minute and large-scale acts of resistance by these women are centered to disrupt the notion that they are without any self determination.^[7] Banerjee concludes that personal acts of resistance like small acts of insubordination and large, public protests both aim for legitimacy within gender roles as acceptable forms of autonomy. Beyond Banerjee’s group of respondents, Luke and Munshi evaluated permanent wage labor on tea plantations and the impact of not varying incomes by caste on women’s mobility.^[8] Family ties to their ancestral community are weakened when a woman has a larger income, which gives her bargaining power in the family. Although the women surveyed were able to voice their opinions at home, it came at the cost of a higher rate of martial violence, perpetuating and increasing the same gender violence they face at work in the home. This was only true for historically disadvantaged castes, meaning that a woman’s ability to use her income to influence household decisions is influenced by her socioeconomic status and caste.

Researchers Siegmann and Sathi refer to the labor on tea plantations as unfree labor based on their analysis of southern Indian tea plantations. Economic and social coercions prey on tea workers’ needs to provide for their families, and capitalizes on gender hierarchies to normalize this coercion for women. This results in long hours for low pay and no ability to leave the plantation. Unfortunately and ironically, the desire to provide mobility for their children keeps the workers immobilized, hoping that the plantation provided education and wages will be enough. Siegmann and Sathi researched the Pembilai Orumani’s or Women’s Unity strike in 2015 shaped the Southern Indian plantation world, where women demanded an increase in wages, healthcare, bonuses, and against the union they believed to be taking their bonuses. This strike was successful with a wage increase, although smaller than they hoped for. They garnered public support based on a shared need to care for their families, placing the women on the forefront of change in their own lives. Pembilai Orumani’s is now a formal group, seeking more concessions such as ambulatory care. Viewing this worker and women led success in conjunction with the work of the Assam Branch of Indian Tea Association and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), there are visible improvements in women tea workers’ lives. UNICEF and the Assam Branch of Indian Tea Association have brought programs focused on maternal and child healthcare. Individual interventions, such as nutrition or alcohol consumption, will not be enough to make changes that impact all worker livelihoods. Changes set in root causes are essential, such as improving living conditions to be in line with the Plantation Labour Act, involving government agencies in stabilizing plantation children’s education, and a government mandated minimum wage.^[9]