The brick factory work is seasonal and the employment is contractual, utterly insecure and wage is piece-rated. Though women workers comprise about one-half of the total workforce in every factory, they hail from the families that survive by working as labourer in every conceivable sense; they are from lower caste and class, illiterate and they are mostly wives of male factory workers. While husbands of those women are not necessarily confined to unskilled factory works women really are. Women are in plethora those works, which are unskilled in nature and where wage earning is comparatively low. Workers after hard day’s toil receive wage that is barest minimum for subsistence. This is why workers are compelled to work along with other family members and as long in a day as they can. Women workers (and others) are deprived of all statutory benefits and amenities like maternity benefits, creche, fixed working hour etc. Even basic minimum welfare provisions like rest shed, drinking water and toilet are conspicuously absent in brick factories. Though owners are amassing whooping profit, they have persistently ignored and evaded the welfare provisions for the workers that are applicable to the factory. Given the nature of skill attainment of the workers, the employment opportunity available in the unorganised sector and insipid role of trade union, there seems no immediate escaping from the bondage and tethering of back-bending work, subsistence wage, insecure job and debasing working conditions.

This book probes into the beedi industry, a highly gendered and class-divided unorganised sector in India. It introduces an analysis of the lives, health status and work of the Indian women and girl children in the industry and discusses the role of gender constructions, global capitalism, and global racism in shaping the ideologies and conceptions about men and women at work. The volume presents a gendered postcolonial perspective on women's employment in the context of social and economic processes that are critical to globalization. It focuses on Telangana's Nizamabad district - where a majority of the women population are employed in the beedi industry. Through detailed surveys and case studies, the author analyses different aspects of exploitation of these women such as poor working conditions, income inequalities, health risks and the realities of child labour in the process of beedi making. Richly detailed, this book will be of great interest to students, researchers and teachers of geography, particularly human geography and feminist geography, women and gender studies, feminism, labour economics, capitalism, development studies, political sociology, and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to gender and feminist geographers, occupational health professionals, NGOs, and those interested in the issues of gender and development.

The book Geography In The 21st Century: Emerging Issues And The Way Forward represents the various emerging issues from varied branches of Geography from traditional to modern perspectives in a planned way. In this Book a total of 24 no. of chapters are there written by various established academicians and researchers from across all Indian states. They lucidly highlighted and expressed their research-oriented outcomes and views regarding various Social, Economic aspects and other modern tools and techniques generally used for the betterment of our society in a visioned way. This book will surely be beneficial to all the researchers of social science in general and Geography in particular and the policy makers and stake holders.

Taking us from our hominid ancestors to the megacities of today, 'Human Geography' brings a new emphasis to the political and economic issues of human geography.

Prostitution is strongly embedded in local cultural practices in Cambodia. Based on extensive original research, this book explores the nature of prostitution in Cambodia, providing explanations of why the phenomenon is so widely tolerated. It outlines the background of the French colonial period, with its filles malades, considers the contemporary legal framework, and analyses the motivations for sex work, examining in particular how women become locked into debt bondage. Overall the book provides significant contributions to wider debates about sex work, sex trafficking and the constrained nature of women’s choices.

A women domestic worker is a person who works within the employer's household. Domestic workers perform a variety of household services for an individual or a family, from providing care for children and elderly dependents to housekeeping, including cleaning and household maintenance. Other responsibilities may include cooking, laundry and ironing, shopping for food and undertaking other household errands. Such work has always needed to be done but before the Industrial Revolution and the advent of labour saving devices, it was physically much harder.

This book approaches the issue of rural-urban inequality through fieldwork conducted in a specific township (Zuogang) in Qinggang County, part of Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China. Presenting painstaking fieldwork in a single location, it successfully illuminates fundamental aspects of the reality and the complexity of rural-urban inequality that cannot be found in macro-level studies, most of which are prepared by economists. The book offers a unique combination of rigorous economic analysis with insightful social and anthropological analysis, as well as revealing interviews with local government officials. This approach provides a rich tapestry of rural perceptions of rural-urban inequality. With in-depth analysis and empirical evidence on questions concerning the development and root causes of urban-rural disparities, the book significantly enriches our understanding of the widely discussed issue of rural-urban income inequality, but from the unique perspective of rural China.

This book contributes to key debates in peacebuilding by exploring the role of theatre and art in general. Premaratna argues that the dialogical and multi-voiced nature of theatre is particularly suited to assisting societies coming to terms with conflict and opening up possibilities for conversation. These are important parts of the peacebuilding process. The book engages the conceptual links between theatre and peacebuilding and then offers an in-depth empirical exploration of how three South Asian theatre groups approach peacebuilding: Jana Karaliya in Sri Lanka, Jana Sanskriti in India, and Sarwanam in Nepal. The ensuing reflections offer insights that are relevant to both students and practitioners concerned with issues of peace and conflict.

Gender and Power in Affluent Asia is the first major study to analyse the relatioships between gender and power that have accompanied the rise of Asian affluence.

Admittedly women's perspectives are not much reflected in the discourse and agenda development planning and interventions. Due to lack of research there is tremendous scarcity of information about social condition of women among various Indian communities. This book is solely devoted to examine the social situation of Muslim Women of India in general and the state of West Bengal in particular. The situation of Muslim women of West Bengal, specially of Northern region of this State has been described in details. The present study seeks to explore: Role and status of Muslim women as well as their problems and prospects, Quality of Socio-economic life of the Muslilm women and the extent of changes that have occured among them, and Problems the Muslim women face towards their empowerment under contemporary changing world order. The book also highlights some of the plicy implications of major findings of the study. With its original data and fresh theoretical perspective the book will serve the interest of social scientists, policy makers and women activists.