The first protest that P Viji ever organised was for toilets.
The year was 2010 and Viji had been running a tailoring shop on SM Street, in the coastal city of Kozhikode, Kerala, for more than 15 years. She had learnt tailoring and set up the shop after failing to get a job as a salesperson in larger shops in the street. “At that time, I was told that they would only hire fair-skinned girls in sales positions, and because I was dark skinned I would be of no use in their shops,” Viji said, as we sat in her office in the shop on a sultry December day. “So I decided to learn tailoring.”
Over the years, Viji formed friendships with other women working in the area. Though she was the proprietor of her establishment, most of the other women worked under other employers.
It pained Viji to hear of the challenges the women faced. “Saleswomen would not be allowed to sit down even once during their 10 or 12-hour shifts,” she said. “They were not even allowed toilet breaks. If they took an extra few minutes at the toilet, the boss would cut their salaries. Even during their menstruation days, they were not shown any leniency.”
This was despite the fact that there were not enough toilets in the area. “So sometimes, women would have to wait a while for their turn,” Viji said. “But even then, their employers would accuse them of taking too much time for their breaks and penalise them.”
She recounted that some women would avoid drinking water so that they would not have to use the toilets as often. “Can you imagine that?” she said. “Due to this, they would develop other health problems like urinary tract issues.”
These stories drove Viji to form Penkootu, a group for working women in the area, in the late 2000s. In 2010, the group organised its first formal protest, to demand that toilets be built for women on the street. A few other activists in the city also joined them in the protest, Viji recalled.
Their protest didn’t have any immediate effect.
Viji and some of her colleagues approached trade unions in the city, seeking support for their demand for toilets – they also raised other demands, such as for better wages and the rights of workers to take breaks and sit down. The unions did not support them.
“They did not care for our problems,” Viji said. “They could not understand why these issues were important to us. They would not even allow us to speak to them properly.”
She added, “They simply didn’t see us as humans and as workers who were equal to them and deserved all the same rights as them.”
But despite this obstacle, the women’s protest was successful – six months later, the district collector inspected the area and ensured toilets were built.
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The failure of trade unions to support the women’s demands was indicative of a wider problem with left movements in Kerala.
The state is the undisputed bastion of left parties and organisations in the country. According to a 2018 report on trade unions in India by the ministry of labour and employment, Kerala has the highest number of registered unions in the country, with 13,099 such bodies – Karnataka is a distant second with only 4,711 registered unions. Kerala also has the largest number of members in state and central unions, at around 38 lakh, followed by Assam, which has around 23 lakh registered members of unions.
Kerala also has the largest number of women members of trade unions – more than 15 lakh women are members of state trade unions and more than 70,000 of central unions.
But Kerala’s trade unions have been criticised for not giving women a platform. A 2018 study analysed women’s participation in the Centre for Indian Trade Unions, one of India’s biggest unions. The study noted that there was a “serious dearth of unions and associations in the organised sector where women are more participative in general and at leadership positions in particular”.
The study also noted that a survey of over “200 collective agreements signed by nearly 1800 trade union leaders revealed that less than five out of 1800 were women trade union leaders who formally participated in collective bargaining and were signatories to the collective agreements”.
Further, the study observed that women face sexual harassment and assault in the unions but out of a fear of losing their jobs, usually refrained from discussing these problems.
“Issues like maternity benefits, night shift work crèche facility and availability of washrooms for women are also matters of concern for working women,” the study noted.
But rather than view these hurdles as immutable, a few women, Viji among them, have sought to tackle them head-on by forming their own unions, through which they brought about significant improvements to the lives of working women.
Viji and her peers in Penkootu first decided to approach the government directly. Since the unions were “so heavily male-dominated, we realised it was no use trying to get them to care about our needs”, she said. “They didn’t view us in a humane way and it felt useless to continue to approach them.”
But to their dismay, government officials refused to acknowledge the women’s demands because they were not a registered union.
Viji and her team decided to form a women’s union and named it the Asanghaditha Mekhala Thozhilali Union, or the Unorganised Sector Workers Union. In 2014, members launched a protest, demanding the “right to sit” for women in textile shops. The protest garnered considerable attention from government officials and the public, inside and outside the state.
Though the union was formed in 2014, Viji and her peers could only register it in 2016. “The other unions discouraged us saying there was no need for a women’s union to be formed because mainstream unions already existed,” she said. “There were several hurdles that we had to face before we were allowed to register properly as a union.”
But the protest by the women sparked similar protests by workers across the state. In 2018, the state government amended its Kerala Shops and Establishment Act, 1960, and introduced a new section that stated that “In every shop and establishment suitable arrangements for sitting shall be provided for all employees so as to avoid ‘on their toes’ situation throughout the duty time, so that they may take advantage of any opportunity to sit which may occur in the course of their work.”
In SM Street, the union also fought for women’s right to use the toilet – though public toilets had been built after the initial protests, proprietors at some establishments still barred employees from using their toilets.
Priya M, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for this story, has been a saleswoman at one such establishment, a textile shop, for more than 20 years. “The toilet inside was only for customers and management staff outside,” she said. “We had to use the toilet outside.”
But six years ago, Asanghaditha Mekhala Thozhilali Union intervened directly in the matter, forcing the shop to change its rules. “Today, we are also allowed to use the toilet inside, the same one used by customers and the management,” Priya said.
Despite these successes, Viji noted that the act of organising women was a fraught one, and that many women workers, especially saleswomen, still hesitate to acknowledge their engagement with the women’s union. “If the employer hears them discussing the union or our work, they reprimand them,” she said.
Women workers have also been fighting to eliminate the gap in wages between men and women workers.
Among Indian states, Kerala has the largest wage gap between men and women engaged in casual labour. According to a report of the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, in June 2023, men workers in the state earned an average wage of Rs 903 per day, while women workers earned only Rs 494.
This corresponded with women’s accounts from the ground. “Women get paid around Rs 450 rupees and men are paid Rs 1,000,” Viji said. “A huge chunk of that money goes off in travel costs, so barely anything is left over for women.”
Dr Neethi P, a researcher from the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, pointed out that the longstanding pattern of unequal wages for men and women was a significant concern for female workers.
“As we have seen in sectors like plantations, despite the existence of trade unions for many years, they have failed to ensure equal pay for men and women,” she said. In this context, she added, she often heard women workers ask questions such as “Why do we have trade unions if they cannot fight for your right to appropriate wages?”
Viji recounted that wages of women workers on SM Street were even lower a few years ago and that Penkootu had made several representations to the employers to increase them. “It was only around Rs 300 before,” she said.
But many women workers on SM Street continue to struggle for money, particularly those who work as sweepers and cleaners.
Seventy-year-old Sreedevi Chandran has worked as a sweeper on the street for more than 36 years. She currently works across four shops, sweeping and mopping the interiors of each, as well as the road outside. She explained that she only gets paid small amounts at each shop, of around Rs 20 or Rs 30 a day. Another woman, also a sweeper, said that they were not even guaranteed this money. “We have to keep badgering them to even give us those few rupees,” she said. “We work and still have to beg them for the money.”
The question of low wages for women was also at the heart of large-scale protests by women tea estate workers in Munnar in 2015, perhaps the biggest public show yet of working women’s disillusionment with mainstream unions.
According to a 2017 paper on the protests, the workers, mostly women, were being paid a wage of Rs 231 per day – when they were denied a wage hike and bonus in 2015, many of the workers were dismayed.
“As per protocol, they brought their frustrations to their respective trade union leaders in order to begin the process up the communication chain,” the paper noted. “When the trade unions failed to act on the workers’ demands, a group of ten female plantation workers on the Periovari estate plotted an infiltration of one of the weekly, male-dominated trade union meetings. The women took the microphone and demanded an explanation. Word spread all over the plantation about this disruption.”
The women formed the Pempilai Orumai, or women’s rights group, and more than 5,000 women held a protest that stretched over 30 days. The women accused trade unions of being corrupt and hand-in-glove with the management, and demanded an increase in their wages. The women refused to allow other male workers, even from their own families or the trade unions, from participating in the protest. Each day, more women skipped work and joined the protest.
The response of local trade unions was telling of their culture of sexism. The paper noted that these unions were enraged by the women’s decision to protest and their “subsequent success” at organising such a large protest.
“It quickly became apparent that the Pempilai Orumai posed a significant threat to the social and political influence traditionally vested in the trade unions,” the paper stated. It added that “Trade union leaders were quick to act on their rage”.
According to the paper, as a way to undermine the women’s protest, other local trade unions also went on strike. “There was one distinctive catch: all those who pledged allegiance to the trade unions were guaranteed 500 rupees from the trade union for every day they participated in the strike,” the paper stated. Many saw this as a form of mockery, and a way of projecting the idea that the women’s protest was an unimportant one. “This mockery and added monetary incentive was a direct attack on the Pempilai Orumai,” the paper stated.
Despite the lack of support from other trade unions, after the women protested for 16 days, the employers agreed to restore an annual bonus of 20% of their annual salary that they paid earlier. The following month, the women protested again to demand a daily wage of Rs 500 – after they protested for 14 days, the employers increased their pay from Rs 231 to Rs 302.
A key problem that women workers face is a lack of women leaders in existing unions.
About 100 km from Kozhikode, in the neighbouring district of Kannur, women workers in a government-run farm told Scroll that they had not received their wages for five months. The women work on cashew and rubber plantations on the farm, and were all members of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions. “We’ve complained to everybody, the management, government officials and also CITU,” one of the workers said. '“Nobody has helped us so far.”
When asked if they knew any women leaders in CITU whom they could approach, they said they did not. “We don’t know if there are any women in big leadership positions,” one worker said.
Sonia George, the general secretary of the Self-Employed Women’s Association, Kerala, noted that while the number of women members in trade unions has increased over the years, even today very few occupied leadership positions. “For example, it is rare to see women become presidents of the unions but they’ll be one of the five vice-presidents,” she said.
She added, “Since the mainstream trade unions are heavily male-dominated it is very rare to see women have equal representation. Leaders are not consciously thinking of ways to enable the increase in women’s participation in trade unions.”
The 2018 study also noted that when it came to attendance at state conferences, key annual events organised by trade unions in different states, women made up half the attendees in most states, but that in Kerala’s conferences, they comprised only slightly more than one-third of the attendees. Kerala was also among the states where women comprised less than 10% of the state committee of CITU – these are crucial elected bodies, and include positions such as of president, vice president and general secretary of the union at the state level. According to the 2018 study that analysed CITU’s membership, in Kerala, only 7% of the union’s state committee members were women.
“These details clearly show that in general, the reluctance to elect women to leadership positions continues, particularly in the stronger state committees,” the study stated.
Other studies, focused on specific industries, have found similar trends. An article by the Centre of Public Policy Research about coir workers in Kerala noted that “women are underrepresented in positions of ownership and management in cooperatives, labour unions, and enterprises connected to the coir industry”.
Further, Neethi argued, trade unions largely function in ways that only suit men. “Worker union meetings and other activities often occur outside work hours or on weekends,” she said. “The care burden and other domestic responsibilities often prevent women from participating in worker-agency activities outside their working space and work hours”
A 2019 paper on women’s participation in trade unions that echoed these arguments found in its analysis that “full participation (of women in trade unions) remains a myth”. It noted, “The masculine structure of the entire industry, lower social acceptance of women’s union activity and existing family responsibilities have made it difficult for women to reach full participation.”
Neethi also pointed out that 95% of working women in the country are engaged in informal work. “In sectors where women’s participation is higher, including garment, construction, and plantations, women get to play primarily supporting roles to supplement the main tasks carried out by male workers,” she said. “They are treated as ‘helpers’ or ‘unpaid family workers’ rather than equal to their male counterparts, which widens the existing gender pay gap in these sectors.”
A 2017 research report, funded by the Kerala State Planning Board, noted that the view of women workers as secondary was so deeply embedded in unions that in 1967, when the Minimum Wages Act was revised, trade unions demanded that “male workers be paid on a monthly basis since it was said they did the vital work and it was reasonable to pay them a high salary”. The unions omitted to include women workers in this demand. “Thus, the demands of the trade unions were not based on an economic rationale but on gender,” the report stated.
The paper also observed that women were discriminated against in the nature of their employment, and that while men were given continuous employment, women “were classified as temporary or seasonal workers towards whom their employers had less obligations”.
George observed that “It is the men’s income that is seen as primary income”, while women’s income is usually considered “secondary”.
A member of the women’s wing of the All India Trade Union Congress, who asked to remain anonymous, disagreed with the criticism that women were not given an equal platform in trade unions. “At the national level, we have a female general secretary,” she said, referring to Amarjeet Kaur, who became AITUC’s first female general secretary in independent India in 2017. CITU has also had a woman leader – K Hemalatha from Andhra Pradesh was elected as the president in 2016. “AITUC takes women’s concerns very seriously,” the member said.
But when asked about gender wage gaps in different sectors, she acknowledged that challenges pertaining to gender did exist inside the union. “The union has different branches for different sectors and some are dominated by men,” she said. “The construction workers union is male-dominated, so there hasn’t been much scope for discussion there about the wage gap.”
Despite these significant challenges, on the ground women’s unions have played a crucial role in bringing about changes in women’s working conditions.
Annamma M, a member of Asanghaditha Mekhala Thozhilali Union and Penkootu, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym, works at a local government office in Kozhikode.
Annamma struggled for years to get a permanent job at the office. “Only the male members were getting permanent positions and despite many representations to the higher-ups, there were no positive outcomes,” she said. Annamma was a member of the CITU but did not receive any support from the union. “Having a membership at CITU was useless,” she said. “Women don’t have a voice in these unions. They are not allowed to grow. One has to remain in a shell if you join these unions.”
Annamma heard of Asanghaditha Mekhala Thozhilali Union in 2019 and approached it, seeking support. Along with Viji and other members of the union, Annamma and some of her colleagues went on a 43-day strike, demanding permanent positions. Eventually, senior local officials gave Annamma and some of her protesting colleagues permanent positions – today, she sits in a cabin of her own.
On other occasions too, such as when she has faced any kind of harassment or bullying in her office, Annamma has approached Asanghaditha Mekhala Thozhilali Union for support. “Any problem I have is immediately resolved,” she said. “It is so important to have a women’s union because nobody can understand our problems like other women do. When trade unions don’t even have women leaders, who do we approach?”
Sreedevi Chandran, who works as a sweeper on SM Street, said the establishment of the women’s union has reassured her that she has a support system in place.“If they really trouble us, then we bring Viji to speak with the employers,” Chandran said. “Now, after the women’s union has been formed, the employers are a little scared of us and worry we will go on a protest. So they listen to our demands.”
