Against the odds: Gendered politics of labour, infrastructure, and claim-making in Kolkata’s poor localities

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Dhawan, Nandita Banerjee and Donner, Henrike. 2025. Against the odds: Gendered politics of labour, infrastructure, and claim-making in Kolkata’s poor localities. In: Aishika Chakraborty and Nandita Banerjee Dhawan, eds. Gendered Bodies and Social Exclusions: Contemporary Issues in Women's Studies. Delhi: Routledge, pp. 129-151. ISBN 9781032234717 [Book Section]

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Abstract or Description

The chapter focuses on the social implications of urban restructuring and the gendered effects of these processes on poor and marginal communities in Indian cities. It draws on empirical research with women belonging to communities that are located in heterogenous, middle-class dominated neighbourhoods of Kolkata and Salt Lake, West Bengal, highlighting the daily interactions with the socio-political sphere and struggles to access limited amenities that shape everyday lives. The chapter focuses on aspects of labour engaging with lacking or inadequate infrastructures using the example of water, it discusses under which circumstances poor women have mobilised to provide support and resources to their communities under conditions of crisis due to the Covid 19 pandemic, andthe conditionalities of political intervention under conditions of scarcity and patriarchal regimes.

Item Type:

Book Section

Additional Information:

“This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Gendered Bodies and Social Exclusions: Contemporary Issues in Women's Studies on 29 August 2025, available online: https://www.routledge.com/Gendered-Bodies-Social-Exclusions-Contemporary-Issues-in-Womens-Studies/Chakraborty-Dhawan/p/book/9781032234717. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.”

Keywords:

Gender, Labour; Cities; India; Housing, Infrastructure, Restructuring, Urban Slums, Sustainable Cities Mobilisation, Gendered Citizenship

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Anthropology

Dates: