Gender and the Politics of Class: Women in Trade Unions in Bengal

Abstract

The essay examines women’s political participation at the intersection of the labour, nationalist and women’s movements in Bengal. The focus is on women labour activists from the 1920s to the 1970s, mostly from the middle classes but also drawing on the example of two working-class women leaders. Scholarship on the subject has so far either deplored women’s marginality in labour movements or celebrated their participation. Moving beyond such dichotomies, this paper explores women’s activism in unions to address three issues: the nature of women’s engagement with labour politics; their negotiations with their own family and the social limits of gendered behaviour; and their response to the political mainstreaming of trade unions in India.