Marble Mines of Rajasthan: A Gendered ‘field’ for Livelihood

In the ‘modern’ world, women have found most of the spaces where they were perceived as inferior or weak/tender. But there are still several sectors where women haven’t found space. Rajasthan is the biggest producer of marble in which women have negligible participation in the productive activity or as a labour. This post is an attempt to reflect upon the factors which are hindering their entrance into this sector.

Patriarchy has always stopped women to participate in social, economic and political activities. Patriarchy has always denoted women as inferior and tender and it gets often legitimised by various ‘sacred’ texts. On the other hand, Capital induced industrialisation has always claimed to be an economic reformer in terms of providing equal access to everyone devoid of identities and background. But the Indian context is somehow very mixed. Participation of women in economic activities has increased in the last three decades but the gendered ‘responsibility’ is still attached to them. The Women Empowerment Index’ (WEI) of 2017 has shown a positive trend in women empowerment of Rajasthan. It has clearly mentioned the increased women participation in education, economic activities and decision making. But in the case of mining, most of the things are stagnant.

From the field experience and after interviewing dozens of mine workers, it becomes very symbolic that mines are meant for the male. In this conception, women are perceived as biologically weak who cannot do ‘heavy’ tasks. This includes multiple stereotypes like; women can’t climb stairs in the deep mines, women can’t tackle heavy machines like drill machines and wire shaw and women’s mind is not capable of doing multiple things at the same time etc. Apart from it, they are considered to be a supporting character to a family rather than a breadwinner. Such conceptions not only make this space gendered but also helps to maintain the patriarchal ideologies by declaring men as ‘superior’. In some cases, women are given space for doing jobs but in those cases, they are provided jobs having less value like breaking marble with the hammer. Such jobs are not considered valuable or worthy therefore women are allowed to do work.

Picture credit: Neeraj Bunkar

Generally, marbles mines are open in nature and the workers have to work in harsh conditions. Although the working condition in an open mine is better than the closed one but the scope of risk is somehow equal. It is worthy to note that mines in Rajasthan have a very serious health impact on workers and diseases like silicosis is common in marble mines. Sometimes this space becomes very dangerous and may cost lives. Promoting jobs in such sector can’t be ethically right but one should also look upon gendered space of a large sector. Whatever the risks are they can’t be absolutely cleared but there is always a scope for minimising it.