- Research & Conference Papers
The Case for Women in Non-Traditional Livelihoods
This research examines how women from resource-poor urban communities engaging in non-traditional careers, like car driving, impact their surroundings and challenge patriarchal structures.
This work aims to answer the following question: What is the impact upon women and their surroundings when women engage in non-traditional livelihoods, and to what extent does their negotiation with and the disruption of patriarchal structures constitute a transformation in these structures? In this thesis, I focus on women from resource-poor urban communities who are engaging in non-traditional careers such as car driving, careers that have been traditionally reserved for men in the Indian context. This research aims to understand what the issues facing these women are as they engage in non-traditional work and what strategies they have employed to negotiate with or disrupt systemic gender norms through their engagement with a livelihood that historically has been performed by men. In order to do so effectively, I explore how work is defined as male work and female work in relation to social structures and gender regimes. This thesis aims to take a holistic view of these women’s lives and their agency to understand how or if they have negotiated or challenged systemic constructions of gender, work, femininity, and mobility as a consequence of their chosen livelihood. This thesis is explicitly feminist and locates itself within the gender studies discourse around work, but also in relation to feminist inquiries in relation to social norms, marriage, and the body.
The narratives reveal a transformation on an individual level as illustrated by the ability that my respondents have had to negotiate with and challenge their habitus. They are using their agency, which they have derived from their career in driving in order to drive change within their own lives and they are serving as role models to others. Additionally, they are, through their actions and resistance, breaking down the binaries that organise society. In conclusion, it has been revealed that in order to disrupt social structures it is imperative that the tools used in this disruption are not merely manifestations of existing social structures; the tools in and of themselves must be disruptive in order to effectuate transformative change.
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