Gender, Poverty and Old Age Livelihoods in Urban South India in an Era of Globalisation

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Pre-print Gender, Poverty and Old-Age Livelihoods in Urban South India in an Era of Globalisation. Oxford Development Studies 40 (3), pp. 324-340, 2012 ISSN 1360-0818.

Gender, Poverty and Old Age Livelihoods in Urban South India in

an Era of Globalisation

Penny Vera-Sanso1

Abstract:

This article examines how older women’s work in the informal economy contributes

to family, national and global economies. It is argued here that protecting and

promoting older women’s livelihoods will not only serve the interests of older

women, but will also have much wider social and economic significance. Drawing on

fieldwork undertaken over the last two decades in urban South India, the article

demonstrates that amongst the poorest families, rather than being dependent on

spouse or family, older women are often self-supporting, support husbands and

subsidise the incomes of younger relatives. Older women’s work not only helps to

reduce family poverty, it is critical to the distribution of agricultural produce in urban

areas and supports India’s global competitiveness. The article identifies how state and

market responses to liberalisation and globalisation are threatening older women’s

livelihoods while failing to provide adequate safety nets for older women or their

families.

Key words: old age, livelihoods, globalisation, inter-generational relations, poverty,

gender, informal economy

The orthodox approach to development and poverty alleviation, ie integration into the

global market, foreign direct investment and the reduction of state provision, relies on

the assumption of a ‘trickle down’ effect that will expand employment and raise

living standards for all. It is claimed that this will enable families to invest in their

1 Birkbeck, University of London, [email protected]. The 2007-10 research project on which

this article is mainly based was undertaken in conjunction with V. Suresh, Marlia Hussain, Henry Joe

and Arul George from the Centre for Law, Policy and Human Rights, Chennai. I am grateful to a

number of generous funders including the University of London for their funding of the 1989-1992

research (Central Research Fund and University Postgraduate Studentship) and the ESRC, EPSRC,

BBSRC, MRC and AHRC for funding the 2007-10 research through the New Dynamics of Ageing

Programme. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for very helpful comments and suggestions.

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futures through education, by building assets and purchasing ‘risk-averting’ pensions

and insurance. Whilst it is clear that certain sectors of society are doing well under

economic globalisation, for others the global market is compounding pre-existing

disadvantage. This compounding is evident when we consider the gender dimensions

of the generation and distribution of wealth, and is particularly so when we investigate

how gender and age combine to determine the living standards of older women – we

find that disadvantage accumulates over a lifetime.2 National and multinational

agencies have put few resources into addressing old age poverty (Gorman and Heslop,

2002; Barrientos, Gorman and Heslop, 2003; Lloyd-Sherlock, 2010). Instead policy

makers have relied on two assumptions: first, that older women are supported by their

spouses or adult children and second, that older women’s economic engagement is of

little consequence to the economy and the development process (Gorman and Heslop,

2002). This article takes issue with both these assumptions. Drawing on two decades

of research in the low-income settlements of urban South India, the article reveals that

older women provide significant sources of financial support to their husbands and

married children. It also demonstrates that older women’s work plays an essential

role in the distribution of agricultural produce and directly supports the economy’s

engagement in global markets. This article not only demonstrates that the routine

assumption of female dependence in old age is erroneous but also identifies the kinds

of policies and effects of globalisation that are undermining older women’s

livelihoods while failing to provide alternative means of support.

The first section of the article introduces arguments to explain why the poor are

forced to work late into old age, and why women are at greater risk of deeper

impoverishment in old age than men. The second section sets out the reasoning

behind gendered work trajectories in urban South India in order to explain gendered

differentials in work patterns and access to spousal and family support. The third

2 The category older here refers to people aged 60 and above which is consistent with the Government

of India’s recent lowering of the age threshold for the means-tested social old age pension. While older

people may not know their exact date of birth, which is common to all contexts without a longstanding

formalised system for registering births, it is generally accepted that functional age and the social

construction of age are not determined by chronology but by economic positioning. In such

circumstances exactitude regarding chronological age is less telling than perceptions of a person’s age,

especially the perceptions of labour hirers, family members and state policy implementers (Vera-Sanso,

2006).

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section sets out older women’s contribution to and experience of the national and

global economy.

The era of globalisation: exacerbating pre-existing pressures on older women

Inequalities in later life derive from the accumulation of advantage and disadvantage

over the life course (Dannefer, 2003). The Cumulative Advantage/Disadvantage

(CAD) approach shifts analytical attention away from dualist approaches that posit

declining physical and mental capacities as the source of old age disadvantage,

focusing instead on issues of inequality both within and between age cohorts. The

CAD framework ‘thus brings into focus questions concerning the extent to which

observed age differences and age-related variability result from systemic processes’

(Dannefer, 2003: S327). Of central importance to the possibilities available in later

life are social and economic class and socio-demographic characteristics; critical to

improving such possibilities is public policy (Estes and Mahakian, 2001; see also

Schroeder-Butterfill and Marianti, 2006). In other words, the circumstances of older

women are the outcome of: a) their social and class position, b) institutionalised

discrimination that women experience throughout their life and c) age discrimination.

The divergent possibilities of later life for men and women within the same social

class are determined by lower levels of education and training for women, gendered

productive and reproductive roles, lower pay, fewer enforceable rights in property and

other assets and lower (if any) independent pensions, coupled with women’s greater

longevity and morbidity in old age. In the South Asian context, where large portions

of the population find it difficult to meet their daily nutritional requirements and

public provision of social pensions and health care fall significantly short of need, the

poor are forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence, irrespective of age and gender. In

these circumstances, and due to the age differentials between spouses and the low

levels of widow remarriage, men are more likely than women to end their lives having

had the financial support and care of a spouse.3 Women, by contrast, face a long old

age reliant on themselves, younger relatives (who are struggling to support their own

marital families) and inadequate state provision to meet subsistence and care needs.4

This reality is very different from the commonly held assumption that in developing

3 See also Rahman (1999) on Bangladesh, and Durr-y-Nayab (2010) on Pakistan.

4 See also Panda (1998) on Orissa, India.

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countries it is inevitably and overwhelmingly women who depend on spousal and

family support in old age.

The erroneousness of the assumption of spousal or familial support for older women

arises from a failure to examine family relations as one of the primary mechanisms

through which economic systems extract paid and unpaid labour. Deeply unequal

systems put pressure on the poorest and socially weakest to labour the most and

accept the lowest returns. Economic systems combine with social and political

systems to value labour and attribute needs and rights by socio-demographic

categorisation: class, race, caste, ethnicity, migration status, gender, age, marital

status, physical ability, and so on. This categorisation defines not only wage levels

but also access to family resources and state provision and, indeed, the capacity of a

person to control the incomes they earn (Vera-Sanso, 2008). What this means in

practice is that in countries without adequate safety nets, the poorest families must

find the means to ensure that everyone contributes to the household economy.5 In

South India, for example, the means used by poorer families to cap dependency and

increase contributions are the formation of nuclear households soon after marriage

and the postponing of support, in favour of more urgent expenses, for those whose

capacity to secure employment or earn a living is on the wane (Vera-Sanso, 2004).6

Global market integration has amplified these pressures on the poorest and socially

weakest as the downward pressure on wages increases, property values boom and

state policies and resources are switched from an emphasis on the direct support of

local social and economic development through public services and the stimulation of

domestic production, including public-sector driven industrialisation, towards

privatisation and the encouragement of foreign direct investment. Simulation and

field studies have demonstrated that trade liberalisation has led to a reduction of

regular work, an increase in casual work and downward pressure on informal sector

wages (Sinha and Adam, 2007; Kaur et al, 2007; Singh and Sapra, 2007). In an

5 See Vera-Sanso (2010) on social pension policy design and implementation outcomes that exclude

the poor. 6 The only people who are likely to be quickly absorbed into another household are those who have a

sudden and irreversible breakdown in their living arrangements, such as young widows or young

deserted women, widowed or deserted men and orphaned or deserted children. The terms on which

they are incorporated into another’s household varies. By no means will all be incorporated as full,

long-term members of the family, as this would provide the family and incomer with much stronger

claims on each other’s resources. Instead, while young women will be given physical protection, men

will have access to a woman’s domestic labour and children a safe environment, most will be expected

to cover their expenses or to take on unpaid work, often to release someone else into the work force.

See also Shah (1996) whose use of census and other data demonstrates that the joint family household

was never the dominant form in India.

Formatted: Highlight

Formatted: Normal, Line spacing: single

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economy such as India’s where an estimated 86% of workers are engaged in informal

activities and the informal sector in 2004-5 (NCEUS, 2008:3) and where 42% of the

population lives on incomes below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day in

2005 PPP (Chen and Ravallion, 2008) it is clear that, far from bringing prosperity,

trade liberalisation has led to the deepening immiseration of the growing number of

informal sector workers (NCEUS 2009). Evidence from the 2001 Census showing a

substantial increase in the female work participation rate demonstrates that a large

number of women entered the workforce as marginal workers to compensate for the

sharp fall in the numbers of main workers, especially male workers since India began

to liberalise under the Structural Adjustment Programme of 1991 (Government of

India, undated).7 Liberalisation has increased the need for older women from the

poorest sections of society to support themselves and their families, drawing many

more women into contributing to the national product and, indirectly, to the global

economy.8

Gender Differentials in Spousal and Family Support

This article draws on two decades of research undertaken in urban Tamil Nadu, the

south-eastern state of India. The research was undertaken in Chennai, formerly

Madras, between 1989 and 1992 and between 2007 and 2010. In the 1989-92 study a

stratified sample of 200 households was selected for qualitative research from a

purposive sample of 450 households surveyed in two slums.9 In the 2007-10 mixed

methods study of 800 households, a survey was undertaken drawing on a systematic

sample of five low-income settlements, including the two from the 1989-92 study.

From the 800 households, 175 participated in in-depth qualitative research. In

addition, a street market in central Chennai was observed between 2007 and 2011.

Chennai is the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu; in 2001 it had over 7 million

residents of whom 7.8% were aged 60 and over (CMDA, 2008). In recent years the

city has developed an international profile for information technology (IT) and Back

Office Processing sectors (BOP) as well as medical tourism, and has a diverse

industrial base catering to national and international markets.

i) Gendered work trajectories and spousal support

The field research, undertaken over the past two decades with people living in

Chennai’s slums, shows an unanticipated degree of continuity in the patterning of

7 See also Durr-y-Nayab (2010) on older women in Pakistan entering the work force to compensate for

male unemployment. Census of India data on work participation rates for 2011 are not yet available. 8 See NSSO 52

nd Round Report (1998:14) which found that older women in India were more self-

supporting than they had been in the prior, 1986-7, NSS survey of older people. 9 For the definition of ‘slum’ in the 2001 Census see Chandramouli (2003) and for the recent

redefinition see Government of India (2010).

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work force participation across the gendered life course. In all the low-income

settings studied, at the start of the marriage husbands are the sole earners. Married

women only take up paid work to cover the gap between family expenses and their

husband’s income.10

By their late twenties a few widowed and deserted women are

beginning to take up paid work.11

Thereafter the number of women entering paid

work rises as their husband’s contribution to the family budget declines. By the time

men reach their late 40s, their contribution to the household budget is increasingly

irregular due to age-discrimination in the labour market, injury and ill-health.12

Qualitative data gathered between 1989 and 1992 revealed that women living in

Chennai’s slums were generally married before the age of twenty, did not start

working until they were in their late twenties or later and only did so to support their

family because of debts, their husband’s inability or unwillingness to fully support the

family or because of widowhood or desertion (Vera-Sanso 1995). The 2007-10 800

household survey in five of Chennai’s slums and the interview data from a subsample

of 175 of these 800 households reveals that women are continuing to enter the work

force to support or substitute for their husband’s role as family provider. While the

reasons propelling women into the work force have remained the inadequacy or lack

of male incomes, the reasons for that inadequacy have changed since the early 1990s.

In Chennai the population structure and labour market is changing and this is evident

in the settlements studied. The survey of 800 households reveals a preponderance of

young men in the age band 20-39, which corresponds to Chennai’s overall population

structure. This youth bulge is a factor contributing to age discrimination against men

in some sections of the labour market that begins when they reach their early forties.

In addition to age discrimination, older men are facing a reorganisation of labour

markets that marginalises middle-aged and older workers; some skilled crafts are

being displaced by digital technologies and some sections of the job market are being

10

See also Kapadia (2010). 11

In surveys deserted women prefer to identify themselves as widows. 12

As is well-documented, there is a high dependence on alcohol consumption in the slums that

impinges on men’s contributions to the household budget. What is not well-documented, but is

repeatedly reported by slum dwellers, is that the pain and injuries of heavy manual work in unsafe

working conditions force men to seek cheap pain relief that will enable them to continue working and,

further, to come off alcohol men must either find ‘less painful work’ or turn to the more expensive,

over-the-counter pain relievers.

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organised using more formal recruitment practices.13

Added to this increasing

marginalisation of middle-aged and older men is a dramatic drop in the number of

men aged 40-44 (highlighted in Table 1); thereafter the number of men in the

population is outstripped by the number of women to the extent that in the sixty and

above age band, there are 1.6 women to every man.14

Table 2 plots the reported work

participation rate for women and men by age. From this we can see that almost all

men are reported as working by the age of 29 and that there is a long and substantial

tail of older men reported working, with the result that while 78% of all males aged

fifteen or more are reported as working, 30% of all men aged over seventy are

reported as continuing to work. Table 3 plots age and reported work participation

against marital status. It demonstrates that approximately one-third of men reported

as working are single and two-thirds are married. It shows that 90% of men aged 20-

24 are single, that by 35-39 most men are married and at age 60-64 90% of men are

married. Tables 2 and 3 reveal results that run counter to the usual expectations

regarding gender, age and dependency. Table 2 reveals that young men aged 20-24

have a lower reported work force participation rate than older men aged 60-64. Table

3 indicates that young men’s work participation is closely linked to their transition

into marriage, which in Chennai’s slums mainly happens between the ages of 25 and

34. Survey data corroborate qualitative data: the pressure on older married men to

generate income is greater than that on younger unmarried men, especially when we

bear in mind that a number of the younger working men surveyed are apprentices

(mechanics, carpenters and painters) whose work is ‘more learning than earning’.

Table 1: Age distribution of females and males in the settlements studied in 2007-

10

AGES Count

% of

Females Count

% of

Males 0-4 101 5.60% 117 7.00% 5-9 141 7.90% 142 8.50% 10-14 143 8.00% 164 9.80% 15-19 140 7.80% 138 8.20% 20-24 188 10.50% 191 11.40%

13

While recruitment agencies formalise the recruitment process, and require workers to fund a mobile

phone, the conditions of work remain informal. 14

This dramatic drop in male slum-dweller numbers from age 40-44 is also reported by the National

Family Health Survey III (IIPS, 2008), a survey of 940 households across the slums of Chennai.

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25-29 173 9.60% 175 10.40% 30-34 146 8.10% 137 8.20% 35-39 126 7.00% 153 9.10% 40-44 111 6.20% 100 6.00% 45-49 110 6.10% 81 4.80% 50-54 89 5.00% 59 3.50% 55-59 70 3.90% 61 3.60% 60-64 90 5.00% 46 2.70% 65-69 66 3.70% 47 2.80% 70-74 55 3.10% 36 2.10% 75-79 20 1.10% 21 1.30% 80-84 15 0.80% 5 0.30% 85-89 7 0.40% 5 0.30% 90-94 1 0.10% 1 0.10% >=95 1 0.10% 1 0.10%

Total 1,793 100.00% 1,680 100.00%

Table 2: Age and work participation of women and men in the settlements

studied in 2007-10

Age bands Female

Population

Female

Workers

% of

Female

Workers

% of

Females in

Age Band

Working

Male

Population

Male

Workers

% of

Male

Workers

% of

Males in

Age Band

Working

Count Count Count Count

0-4 101 0 0.0% 0%

117 0 0.0% 0%

5-9 141 0 0.0% 0%

142 0 0.0% 0%

10-14 143 2 0.6% 0.6%

164 5 0.5% 0.50%

15-19 140 22 6.2% 16%

138 46 4.7% 33%

20-24 188 33 9.3% 16%

191 138 14.1% 72%

25-29 173 41 11.5% 24%

175 158 16.1% 90%

30-34 146 41 11.5% 28%

137 128 13.0% 93%

35-39 126 42 11.8% 33%

153 147 15.0% 96%

40-44 111 40 11.3% 36%

100 95 9.8% 95%

45-49 110 41 11.5% 37%

81 78 8.0% 96%

50-54 89 32 9.0% 36%

59 55 5.6% 93%

55-59 70 20 5.6% 29%

61 54 5.5% 89%

60-64 90 18 5.1% 20%

46 32 3.3% 76%

65-69 66 13 3.7% 20%

47 23 2.3% 49%

70-74 55 6 1.7% 11%

36 14 1.4% 39%

75-79 20 3 0.8% 15%

21 5 0.5% 24%

80-84 15 1 0.3% 7%

5 1 0.1% 20%

85-89 7 0 0.0% 0%

5 1 0.1% 20%

90-94 1 0 0.0% 0%

1 0 0.0% 0%

>=95 1 0 0.0% 0% 1 0 0.0% 0%

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Table 3: Age and marital status of working women and men in the settlements

studied in 2007-10

Working Females Working Males

Single Married Widowed Single Married Widowed

Count 73 167 114 272 694 13

% % % % % %

10-14 2 2

15-19 30 17 0.1

20-24 38 2 0.8 45 2

25-29 15 15 4 25 13 8

30-34 6 19 4 7 15 8

35-39 6 18 7 2 20 15

40-44 13 17 0.7 13 8

45-49 3 13 17 0.4 11 8

50-54 8 17 0.4 8 8

55-59 4 12 8 8

60-64 7 6 0.7 4 8

65-69 2 8 0.4 3 23

70-74 5 2 8

75-79 3 0.7 3

80-84 0.8 0.1 0.8

85-89 0.1

90-94

>=95

Turning to the data on the female population in the slums studied, Table 1

demonstrates that while there is also a youth bulge in the population pyramid for

women, the drop in numbers across the age bands is less precipitous than for men,

despite starting at the same age, ie 25-29, which is also the age at which women’s

reported work force participation begins to climb (see Table 2). Unmarried women

are reported as working earlier than unmarried men and some women seem to be

working until their late twenties, which is late for marriage in these settlements. This

appears to corroborate activist views that families have begun to delay their

daughter’s marriages as young unmarried women are now better placed to earn

incomes in Chennai’s export-orientated economy. More than half of women aged over

40 reported as working are widows (see Table 3). However, it is not widowhood per

se that is the determining factor in women’s work, for only a third of all women

reported as workers are widowed (see Table 3, counts). Rather, for women work is

associated with greater age; 62% of women reported as working are aged 40 and over,

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the peak being 45-49, where the percentage of women reported as working reaches

37% (see Table 2). A larger percentage of women aged 65-69 (20%) is reported as

working than of women aged 20-24 (16%). If we take Government of India

standards for working age (15-59 years), it is apparent that in the slums, for men and

women, work is more closely aligned with ‘post-retirement age’ than with ‘early

working life’ and that the association of women with later life working is stronger

than it is for men.

The number and proportion of women reported as working is much less than that of

men. Yet to dismiss women as having a limited role in supporting themselves, their

husbands or their families would be to misunderstand women’s, particularly older

women’s, role as an economic safety net in domestic economies. This is visible from

an analysis of work trajectories across the life-course. While the total number of men

reported as working in the five slums outnumbered women by nearly three times, 63%

of the reported male workforce in the settlements studied was under forty and only

37% of men reported as working are aged forty or more. By contrast, 49% of

reported women workers were over forty (see Table 2). Breaking this down further,

Table 2 demonstrates that between the ages of 25 and 29 men reported as working

outnumbered women reported as working by a ratio of 4:1, but in the age band 40-44

men’s dominance fell to 2.3:1 and then to 1.8: 1 in the age band 65-69. What we are

seeing are work trajectories in which husbands start out as the main family providers,

over time many married women are forced into work to supplement or substitute for

insufficient, possibly falling, male incomes and/or contributions to the household,

such that by age 39, a third of women are reported as working. The proportion then

continues to rise as women move from supplementing to substituting for and then

replacing a spouse’s contribution to the household.

Qualitative data gathered from in-depth semi-structured interviews with members

from 175 of the 800 households studied provides a more nuanced account of age,

gender and workforce participation than is possible from the survey data set out

above. It demonstrates that ‘worker’ status is as much about gender-age identity as it

is about whether a person works. As provider status is so closely aligned with

masculinity and, bearing in mind the dominance of casual labour and the paucity of

pensions in the informal economy, it is only when men have completely given up

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work, including the search for work, that they are no longer classed as ‘workers’ by

themselves and their families. Older women are much less likely to be classed as

workers; frequently they are classed as ‘helpers’ in someone else’s micro business,

even if that business was originally theirs or they are the primary or only worker.15

The fact that ‘worker’ is a socially-situated identity, causing older men to be over-

defined as workers and older women to be under-defined, both by themselves and by

their families, means that reported ratios of men and women working in later life are

extremely likely to overestimate gendered differentials in old age work participation

by underestimating the rates of decline in men’s work and of increase in women’s

work over the life course. Even so the overall trend revealed by the survey, of

declining male work and increasing female work over the life course, remains valid.

Overall, the pattern in Chennai’s low-income households is one in which young men

try to secure regular, or frequent, work in order to establish themselves as adults and

to improve their marriage prospects.16

Women, on the other hand, may work to help

their birth family when young but withdraw from the workforce prior to marriage,

only taking up work after marriage because of a shortage of male incomes, either

through men’s declining access to work, reduced contributions to the household,

widowhood or filial support which is insufficient, if any. Hence men’s economic

contribution to the marital family is high at the beginning of marriage and then

declines over the life course, whereas women’s starts with no paid work and no

‘helper’ role, and then, if they start working, rises over the life course, generally

continuing into late old age.

As was also the case in the 1989/92 study, in the 2007-10 study many older women

were engaged in small-scale vending businesses, such as selling agricultural produce,

cooked food and clothing, while older men were more likely to be on casual day and

15

See also Rahman (2010) on Bangladesh, where over 70% of men aged over 55 are self-employed

while 35% of women working aged over 55 years are classed as engaged in unpaid family

employment. Between 1997 and 2006 this was the only growing employment status in Bangladesh. 16

The dominant marriage system in Chennai is arranged marriage. In Chennai’s low-income

settlements the arranged marriage market places a premium on demonstrable capacity and willingness

to conform to conventional gender roles. This requires young men to be ‘settled’ in work and young

women ‘at home’ when marriage alliances are being sought; thereby influencing labour force

participation rates in early adulthood for both men and women.

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piece rates.17

This was the result of a gendered division of work whereby men would

only take on, and only be taken on for, ‘masculine’ work, such as masculine roles in

construction (plumber, plasterer and so on) and cycle rickshaw work. Men would

only participate in more capitalised vending, including as a casual labourer, whereas

petty trading by women was considered gender-appropriate. The disadvantage older

men have here, as compared to older women, is that concepts of gender-appropriate

work can combine with age discrimination to lock older men out of income earning

in a way that does not happen to women. Bearing in mind that women in South India

are generally five to ten years younger than their husbands, what we are seeing here is

a clear trend of women taking up work in their thirties and forties, once their

husband’s work opportunities begin to decline, and continuing to work deep into old

age, often helping to make younger women’s businesses viable. This means that

rather than all, or even most, wives being supported by husbands in old age, a

significant number of wives living in Chennai’s slums are supporting older men either

fully or in part.18

Men and women marry with the expectation that men will support their wife and

family while women will take on the onerous and time-consuming work attached to

running a home and bringing up children in a context of poor or no state provision for

water, drainage, health, childcare, education and so on. However, under the

conditions of poverty, low and irregular incomes, injury, chronic ill-health and age

discrimination men become increasingly less able to secure sufficient levels of

income, forcing women to extend their efforts to manage the home and family on

declining resources and rising debts and, finally, to take on paid work.19

Taking a

life-course perspective demonstrates that relations between husbands and wives are

much more interdependent than is suggested by accounts that posit older women as

dependent on the incomes of their spouses. If a life-course perspective is tied to one

that investigates how gendered identities are reproduced over time, we can see that

17

See Rahman (2010) on Bangladesh for the reverse situation; self-employment is much more the

preserve of older men and women are more likely to be employed on casual or piece rate. 18

See also Chant (2007:150) on Gambia where ‘elderly’ women vegetable sellers described themselves

as ‘slaves’ to their men. As in India, it appears that in Gambia the efforts of working older women in

supporting themselves and their husbands are disregarded by younger men who consider older people

‘the best off ‘because we care for them all the time’’ (ibid:181). 19

Age discrimination in relation to wages is widespread in South Asia (Arunatilake, 2010; Rahman

2010; Ghosh et al, 2010; Vera-Sanso, 2004)

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men and women’s gender identities not only constrain their opportunities for work

over the life course but that they result in the over-stating of men’s role as workers

and providers and women’s status as non-working dependents. From a CAD

perspective, we can see that the advantages and disadvantages of class, caste and

gender play out in such a way that while all those living in slums are disadvantaged as

compared to other classes and castes, women are in a more disadvantaged position in

relation to their work opportunities, pay and work-status than men. Ironically,

women’s inferior work and social status enables them to work longer than men but, as

will be seen below, in circumstances of severe poverty this may make them less able

to rely on others’ support in old age.

ii) Age, work and family support

The assumption that women are, or should be inevitably and adequately supported by

their families in old age is misplaced.20

The economic pressure amongst the poor for

everyone to contribute to family incomes ensures that older women work as much as

they can to support themselves and, frequently, to assist the families of their married

children. This assistance starts in early middle age, when working parents have newly

married children living with them and cover all housing and establishment costs (rent,

tax, electricity, repairs) and may substantially provide for the young family’s food and

other expenses, prior to becoming nuclear households (Vera-Sanso 2004; see also

Caldwell et al, 1988). Comparing the 1989-92 and the 2007-10 studies reveals that the

impact of Chennai’s property boom on the lower end of the housing market, including

that in squatter settlements, has sharpened pressures on low-income families, slowing

young families’ move out of the parental home and forcing many to return to it. The

result is substantially higher levels of over-occupation of parents’ very small homes,

which are now commonly occupied by between one and three married children’s

nuclear households; these are complex households in which each family, including

that of the parent(s), maintains ostensibly independent economies. In practice,

however, older parents and especially older mothers, are not able to resist pressure for

the transfer of resources and labour to ease the frequent difficulties that their

children’s families confront.

20

See Kreager and Schroeder-Butterfill (2008) for an analysis of varying cultural formats for

intergenerational relations and exchanges and how these are shaped by class position.

Page 14 of 25

,

When married children live elsewhere, parents continue to help them with food,

money, loans, the lending of items for pawning and with labour. For those living in a

low-income settlement and having to rely on public sector safety nets, the delivery of

the basic inputs necessary to sustain life (drinking water, sewers, storm water

drainage) and social protection (the Public Distribution System of subsidised food

rations), is inadequate and unpredictable and accessing them requires significant

inputs of time and effort. In these circumstances, someone needs to be at home to

take on domestic and caring work and many older women do this work for family

members, irrespective of whether they are living in the household or not.

Alternatively, older women play a critical role in their daughter or daughter-in-law’s

capacity to earn an income as there are strong impediments to them hiring or working

with anyone other than a closely-related older woman.21

In these two-person petty

vending businesses, older women are considered simply to be ‘helping out’.

However, the centrality of older women’s role is demonstrated by the swiftness with

which such businesses collapse when the younger woman no longer has access to the

older woman’s labour, due to significant ill-health, extreme frailty or death.22

Under circumstances of significant privation and the now low rates of child labour

(see Table 2) many men and women have to rely on their parents, particularly their

mothers, for help.23

This means that once women start working after marriage, their

families expect them to carry on working until they are no longer able to do so.

Determining exactly when aged women need economic support, how much they need

and who will provide it is a heavily contested issue (Vera-Sanso 2006) and a number

of different patterns of support exist, some of which serve more to acknowledge the

relationship than sustain the parent. Parents may receive small sums of money on a

weekly or monthly basis as a token of care; they may visit a son or daughter for a

meal or a son may bring food to his mother to cook and share with him if he works

closer to her home than his. In some instances mothers visit their working daughter’s

houses on a daily basis to take care of grandchildren and do vital domestic work and

receive food in exchange.

21

Impediments include a strict taboo on women employing unrelated men to work for them, men’s

unwillingness to work for family women and young women’s reluctance to work in contexts where

they are not closely supervised/chaperoned (Vera-Sanso 1995; Lessinger 1990) 22

As long as vendors have someone who can fetch goods from the wholesaler/retailer, vending is more

forgiving of frailty than other occupations open to older people, as pavement vendors sit all day. 23

See also Barrientos, Gorman and Heslop (2003).

Page 15 of 25

,

These varied and variable arrangements are the inevitable outcome of insecure

livelihoods in the informal economy, inadequate access to basic infrastructural

provision, age discrimination, morbidity and mortality, all of which impinge on the

possibility of older people depending on their children for support in old age. Two

further demographic factors and one sociological factor impinge on older people’s

support. The continuing legacy of early marriages alongside increasing longevity

means that families can now, and will increasingly, comprise up to five generations

(assuming 20 years between each) of which one is an infant, one has children to

support, the next is facing age discrimination in the labour market and two, being in

their sixties and eighties, are classed as ‘old’. In these circumstances reliance on

family support for older people is not feasible amongst those living on very low

incomes and older people, particularly older women, will need to make significant

contributions to the household economy wherever social pensions are not available,

inaccessible or do not cover needs.

From a sociological perspective, we know that the distribution of resources within

social entities across radically different scales (state to family) is shaped by shifting

conceptualisations of needs and rights (Fraser, 1989; Whitehead, 1981). Underlying

the low level of support for older women are two views: first, that older people,

especially older women, have limited needs that are easily met with small quantities

of food or money and, second, that children have a right to health care, education and

to a childhood free of child labour (Vera-Sanso 2004). If an older woman has been

supporting someone, usually her husband, once that person is gone she is judged by

her family to have an income larger than she needs. This is why older working

women are deemed not to need support and may be pressed for what their married

children view as excess income. The reasons for the continual deferral of support for

women in later life and for downward transfers of resources lie in the downward

pressure on work and wages, the rising cost of living, especially in relation to food

and housing, and in the inadequacy of state provision of basic infrastructure, including

education and health, in slums, , which frequently forces residents to resort to non-

state providers (Balagopal, 2009).

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It is clear that, contrary to the assumption that women in later life are supported by

their families, older women in poorer communities may well be self-supporting, and

are likely to provide housing, money and collateral to their adult married children, to

take on domestic duties and childcare or ‘help out’ in vending businesses in order to

allow their daughters and daughters-in-law to juggle work and domestic

responsibilities.24

Older Women’s Contribution to the National and International Economy in

Chennai: the case of domestic work and street vending

Having seen that older women are not uniformly dependent on either husbands or

families in later life and that women play an important direct and indirect role in the

livelihoods of their married children, we need to ask whether older women’s work

force participation is of significance to the national and international economy. Older

women’s roles are shaped by shifts in the wider economy, including the expansion of

new industries and young people’s move out of the lower-paid, less prestigious, more

arduous forms of work or more taxing work locations. Younger women and men and

children are moving out of a range of jobs that are being taken on by older women,

most notably domestic work and street vending. By taking on the lower status and

less well paid but necessary work that younger people have vacated, older women are

contributing to the national economy in the way that studies of the informal sector

pointed to thirty years ago, that is by holding down wage costs in the formal sector

(Lomnitz, 1977) and by expanding the available workforce.

In recent years, Tamil Nadu has become closely tied into the global economy through

a wide range of sectors, including its IT and BOP sectors; older women working as

domestic workers to employees in these sectors are indirectly contributing to the

global economy by providing the essential domestic labour needed to reproduce the

labour power of young, unmarried employees who migrate to the city to live in shared

accommodation. Similarly, the ‘gender dividend’ that is expected from the rising

work force participation of women in expanding export production, services and retail

is facilitated by older women taking on the domestic and caring work of wives and

24

For examples of this elsewhere, see Schroeder-Butterfill (2004) on Indonesia, Paradza (2009) on

Zimbabwe, Nyanzi (2009) on Uganda, Judd (2009) on China and Bastia (2009) on Bolivia.

Page 17 of 25

,

mothers. In this way, older domestic workers are critical to the expansion of an

educated labour force in Chennai and to keeping wage rates down, both of which

contribute significantly to India’s competitiveness in the global market.

As with domestic workers, , street vendors contribute to the global economy in a

number of ways. Primarily their overheads are small so they can sell very cheaply.

Their distribution throughout the city facilitates the employment of women by making

low-cost prepared food, agricultural produce and other goods easily accessible to

them on their way to and from work. The opportunity to buy locally in small

quantities on a daily basis benefits the Indian economy by enabling women to

participate in India’s standard six day working week, and by providing the means for

people on daily wages to source food on a daily basis. The poorest older women

tend to trade in the riskier end of street vending, by selling the more perishable items

that require lower capital investment such as green leafy vegetables and tomatoes that

provide the cheapest fresh food available for people to buy. Older women’s street

vending sustains India’s competitiveness in the global market by holding down wage

costs and by increasing married women’s labour force participation. Further, in a

context where over 65% of Tamil Nadu’s population depend on agriculture for a

living (Government of Tamil Nadu 2003:5) and most fruit, vegetables, spices and so

on that reach the final consumer are brought by market traders, street vendors and

hawkers from the wholesale market to local residential and commercial areas, older

women play an important role in linking the agricultural and urban economy. They

also support small businesses: by drawing people to the street market they increase

the footfall essential for the survival of small businesses without a brand identity.

Despite the importance to the economy of street vending in general, and older

women’s street vending in particular, vending is threatened by a number of recent

developments in urban and economic planning. Big national and international capital

is beginning to move in on street vending, pursuing predatory pricing strategies that

are forcing street vendors out of self-employment and down the social scale to casual

and piece rate work such as washing clothes. In the longer term this is likely to have

a highly pernicious effect on street vendors. In an effort to attract FDI by turning

Chennai into a world city the Corporation of Chennai and the World Bank, in

association with rising middle-class activism, is attempting to limit street vendor

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Page 18 of 25

,

numbers through licensing and clearing street markets (Srivathsan, 2012; Arabindoo,

2010: Harriss, 2006) .25

Such efforts draw on an idealised image of ‘the western city’

as an ordered city of free flowing traffic in which streets are stripped of people and

activity, becoming corridors for the unimpeded movement of people and things to and

from large residential, retail and commercial complexes; a city in which public space

is only occupied by those engaged in high end consumption.26

Beautification and

anti-congestion schemes implemented by the Corporation of Chennai have resulted in

the relocation or restriction of longstanding street markets.27

This 'cleansing' of the

city of the urban poor has been challenged in the Supreme Court and a regulatory

framework is being negotiated with the National Alliance for Street Vendors of India

that will protect street traders’ livelihood rights. It is notable, however, that vending

as a trade particularly suited to the needs of older people (as it enables them to tailor

their practices to their needs, capital and capacities) is not recognised. Rather vending

is seen as a livelihood that should be restricted to current vendors; it is not seen as a

trade into which older people might move.

While older women’s urban livelihoods play an important role in local and global

economies by increasing Chennai’s competitiveness in the global market by

facilitating the expansion of the labour force and keeping wage rates down, the under-

recognition and under-valuation of that role threatens older women’s contribution as

well as their capacity to support themselves, their husbands and families. The current

trend is to squeeze older women out of the trade most suited to, and most profitable

in, older age, that of vending, forcing older women back into domestic work.

Extrapolating from evidence gathered on the impact of the 2008-9 sub-prime crisis on

the slum settlements studied, it is clear that those engaged in self-employment,

including vendors, were more able to weather the financial storm by putting in more

25 In this article ‘global city’ refers to the aspiration to become a global city, it does not refer to global

cities as defined by Sassen (2001), also classed as Alpha ++ world cities by the Globalisaton and

World Cities Research Network. According to the latter, Chennai did not rank as a world city in 2000

but became a minor world city in 2004, rising from gamma to gamma+ world city in 2008. 26

See Sassen (2001) on the informal economy underbelly of the global cities of New York, London

and Tokyo. 27

This restructuring of the urban landscape is the outcome of a rising middle class identity ‘linked to a

politics of “spatial purification” (Sibley, 1995), which centres on middle class claims over public

spaces and a corresponding movement to cleanse such spaces of the poor and working classes’

(Fernandez 2004: 2416) which is occurring in all of India’s leading cities (see Chatterjee 2004 on

Kolkata, formerly Calcutta; Rajagopal 2001, Fernandez 2004, Anand 2006, Anjaria 2006, on Mumbai,

formerly Bombay).

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Page 19 of 25

,

hours of work than were those whose quantum of work was determined by hirers and

employers (Olsen et al, 2010).

Conclusion

This article examines how older women’s work in the informal economy contributes

to family, national and global economies. It reveals that the expectation that women

will be supported by their spouse or family in old age is erroneous. A close

examination of work patterns across the life course in five slums that takes into

account wider issues such as the impact of economic policy on labour markets, age

discrimination and gendered roles and constraints, uncovers the increasingly large

role in spousal and family support played by women as they age. By setting survey

data against qualitative data, the article exposes the way in which gender biases

highlight men’s work and disguise women’s work. It demonstrates that older men are

still defined as workers when in fact their time is increasingly spent looking for work

without success, while older women may spend long hours running family businesses

as unpaid and unrecognised workers but are seen as merely helping out or passing

time. .

The article reveals that older people support younger relatives in diverse ways, from

subsidising living costs to taking on reproductive and caring work, in order to help

younger relatives get by in the city. By pointing to the linkages of older women’s

work to the agricultural economy and to new and old industries through their enabling

of younger women’s work participation and their undertaking of young migrants’

domestic work, the article shows that older slum women’s paid and unpaid work is

not marginal to the national and global economy but an important buttress to a range

of policies and strategies, including economic liberalisation itself. Older women’s

work helps to ease the punitive costs of economic liberalisation on those at the bottom

of the social scale by supporting their families and providing cheap goods and

services. The latter benefits capital and India itself by facilitating the maintenance of

a low-cost work force.

The article demonstrates the dynamic nature of the factors that are meshing together

to produce the current situation in which the urban poor and older slum women find

themselves. Economic liberalisation and integration into the global economy has

Page 20 of 25

,

deepened the already significant deprivation of a huge population of impoverished

people. Casualisation of regular work, pressures on informal sector wages, the

opening up of new contexts for younger people to work, globalisation’s impact on

food and property markets and marketisation of services are combining with

demographic legacies and shifts to undermine the capacity of families in slum

settlements to sustain themselves. These are new factors that are deepening the

difficulties that families who live on severely depressed incomes under conditions of

high morbidity and mortality have always had to face in sustaining themselves and

supporting people too old to support themselves. At the moment economic spaces

have widened for older women to work, some of which, such as street vending,

provide good and flexible opportunities for their livelihoods. However, pressure from

big national and international capital as well as from urban planners and street

vendors’ associations may squeeze older women out of vending, pushing them further

down the social scale. Until older women’s work is recognised for its part in reducing

poverty and buttressing the economy and until they are recognised as workers with

rights equal to those of younger people, older women’s livelihoods will remain

insecure and their wellbeing, as well as that of their spouses and families, will not

improve.

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