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'Strictly legal means': assault, abuse and the limits of acceptable behaviour in the servant-employer relationship in metropole and colony 1850-1890’

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posted on 2023-06-09, 05:13 authored by Fae DussartFae Dussart
This chapter proposes to read A Life Less Ordinary as a critical feminist practice that enables to address the question of self-writing and the persistent historical problem of domestic service from the point of view of the subaltern. Baby Halder a domestic worker comes from the state of West Bengal, which in the past housed the British imperial capital in the city of Calcutta until 1911, and was the first state in India to have an encounter with Western 'modernity'. Baby displayed a commitment to the ideology of 'social feminism' that emerged in the context of the newly educated 'respectable women' of the colonial era. Baby's story can be read as one of unequal developments in India where a vast majority of the female workforce, many of them underage and hence children, work as domestic workers. Initially, the Bill on the Protection of Women Against Sexual Harassment at Workplace, passed on December 17, 2010, did not even include domestic workers.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Routledge

Volume

4

Page range

153-171

Pages

355.0

Book title

Colonization and domestic service: historical and contemporary perspectives

Place of publication

New York

ISBN

9781138013896

Series

Routledge international studies of women and place

Department affiliated with

  • Geography Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Victoria K Haskins, Claire Lowrie

Legacy Posted Date

2017-02-16

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