CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Mohapatra, Tithi |
|---|---|
| Title | Woman Workers in the Indian Coal Mining Industry: A Gender History of Wage Strategies and Wage Structures, 1920-1967 |
| Summary | Between the early 1900s and 2000, the percentage of women among mineworkers in Indian collieries fell from around 50 per cent to 3.3 per cent. During the 20th century, with the decreasing percentage of women in the mining workforce, the increasing masculinisation of the mining space, and the international interventions and influences, Indian collieries witnessed changes in the conceptualisation of wages of men and women mineworkers. This thesis chronologically traces and analyses the development of major wage strategies that permeated the wage structures of the Indian coal mining industry in the 20th century, discussing wages based on individual productivity and needs, family wages, and minimum wage and equal pay. The thesis argues that the prohibition of women mineworkers from belowground mining was a crucial factor impacting the development and legitimisation of the (male-breadwinner) family wage among the unskilled manual workers in the Indian collieries as it changed the conceptualisation of women workers from co-providers (along with their husbands) to dependents. In doing so, the thesis also looks at the similarities between the conceptualisation of men’s rights as workers and women’s work, as well as the merging of child and female work in the (male breadwinner) family wage model and the legislation prohibiting women from belowground mining. The thesis establishes that the wage discrimination (based on social, geographical and sex differences of the workers) that permeated into the wage structures of the Indian collieries made the different sections of the same class of unskilled workers prone to varying degrees of vulnerability. It also traces and analyses the development of the nation-standardised wage structures of the Indian coal mining industry for the unskilled manual worker of the lowest category from a wage structure based on a gendered minimum wage to a wage structure based on a minimum wage following the principle of equal pay for equal work. It also discusses the difference in incorporation of the principle of equal pay for equal work in the wage structures of manual and non-manual workers. |
| Supervisor | Zimmermann, Susan Carin; Trencsenyi, Balasz |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/mohapatra_tithi.pdf |
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