Lived Experiences of Paid Cashew Work and Unpaid Domestic Work A Study among Women Working in Cashew Processing in India

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Published: May 7, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14288/workplace.v37i1.187150
Keywords:
women's work, cashew work, unpaid work, caste, social security, survival, precarity, temporary work, factory work, India

Main Article Content

Abi Babu
Tata Institute of Social Science

Abstract

By exploring the experiences of women cashew processing workers in Kerala, India, this study examines the interlinkages between paid cashew processing work and unpaid domestic work. Drawing on feminist qualitative research, it analyses how these two forms of work are intertwined through women’s everyday lives and embodied experiences. Situating the study within broader feminist scholarship on gendered labour in Kerala, it argues that women experience paid and unpaid work as a continuum, interlinked through women’s embodied labour. This continuum is shaped by caste, class and the nature of employment, temporary or permanent, government or private. The study further reflects on how survival becomes the core component of both forms of work and how women’s meanings, values and emotions challenge the binary between productive and reproductive labour. By placing women’s voices and embodied experiences at the centre of analysis, this study contributes to intersectional feminist understandings of work and labour embodiment within Kerala’s gendered labour scholarship.


 

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 37 No. 1 (2026): Teachers’ Work in Contentious Political Times (Part 2) + Global Labour Research Centre Student Symposium
Section
GLRC Symposium
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Author Biography

Abi Babu, Tata Institute of Social Science

Abi Babu is a Senior Social Worker with Urja Trust, an NGO based in Mumbai that works with homeless young women and LBT youth focusing on gender based violence. Previously she was a social work student at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, studying the intersectional experiences of the women and their diverse lived realities. My MA research focused on the intersections of paid work and unpaid domestic work in the lives of women. Social work, gender and sexuality, mobilization and social action, women and work are her major academic interest areas.