Connections Unperceived

Connections Unperceived THIS booklet presents in a collected form a substantial amount of useful information about the problems of women workers in Indian industry. The scope of the book is mainly restricted to the 'organised sector', though the author mentions that the conditions of large numbers of women in the 'unorganised' or 'household industry' sector are even worse. Drawing on official statistics (which, she observes, tend to underplay the gravity of these problems) and on her own experience as a trade union organiser among mines and plantation workers in West Bengal, Ranadive has covered the major aspects of the question: shrinking numbers, relative and absolute, of women workers in organised industry; wage and job discrimination; and the non-implementation of special protective laws for women workers. These three aspects are of course related; women arc often employed just where they can do the same job as men, for less pay. Where equal wage or minimum wage laws are brought into effect, women are retrenched, The laws providing for maternity benefits and creches are widely honoured in the breach; and employers cite these laws as the main reason for their retrenchments of women workers.