Revisiting class: A feminist political analysis of the Indian Time Use Survey

Abstract

AbstractThe literature on agrarian change in India has largely employed class categories based upon data on land, assets and occupational status, which collapse women's class relations into those of (mostly male) households heads. In this paper, we interrogate this understanding of class building on the work of Carmen Diana Deere. Employing the first ever national time use survey conducted in India in 2019, we interrogate class as a labour process that intersects with caste and gender. Our analysis of the data using a Marxist‐feminist framework suggests the following. First, there exist intra‐household gendered differences in class locations. This calls to question theoretical frameworks that assign a cohesive class location to all household members that underlie data collection in India and elsewhere. Second, individuals participate in multiple labour processes depending on their caste and gender. Hence, they may be subsumed to capital in varied and sometimes contradictory ways. Finally, we find that both men and women engage in reproductive labour in addition to other forms of labour, which varies by caste categories. This finding further underscores and supports previous research on the importance of an expanded conception of work that includes reproductive labour. In sum, we argue for a more complex understanding of class in India, one that incorporates its caste and gender dimensions.