Dependent Earners of Colonial Bengal: The Unremunerated Contributors

Fairooz Jahan

Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Dhaka

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59815/bhs.vol2803

Abstract: This research paper aims to analyse the history of under-remuneration and under-representation of the working wives of colonial Bengal’s marginal families despite their substantial contribution to generating the familial income. Albeit, women of all relations in impoverished rural families had been involved in various forms of labour by their own capacity, this study categorically mentions the working wives. The reason is, unlike the other female participants, the young wives did not have the experience or knowledge of working in a new family economy and had to face several battles on their own to create a positive balance between production, consumption, and surplus making for the household income. Regardless, these women were often stranded as unremunerated and unseen agents in the socio-economic structure of rural Bengal.

At present, the study of female labour is consequential in both the disciplines of gender and labour history. However, in most South Asian scholarship, the labour of low-wage-earning, marginal woman has been categorised as a supplementary means of income and these actively working women have been characterised as ‘dependent’ earners. Nonetheless, the paucity of substantial archival and published public evidence has also exacerbated these women’s position in existing historiography.

This study is an attempt to address the unseen labour of these working wives of colonial Bengal and to portray the injustice they suffered from each significant section of the society. To ensure authenticity of the paper, qualitative research method has been conducted through extensive collection and analysis of primary and secondary source materials.

Key Words: Work, Women, Bengal, Domesticity, Dependency, Census, Remuneration, Recognition.