Profiting off the ‘Doing Good’ Narrative: The Case of Women’s Under-compensated Labour in Indian NGOs

Abstract

In this thesis, I argue that NGOs in India thrive on the under-compensated labour of women by perpetuating a ‘doing good’ narrative. This narrative serves as an anchor as well as a driving force for the sector – where employees, especially women, are urged to exercise altruism to perform work that is perceived to be ‘natural’ to their gender – like exercising empathy, emotion management, and care work in shelter homes. As NGOisation in India coincided with the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the early 1990s, this phenomenon witnessed an increased participation of women in the Indian labour market. Additionally, NGOisation introduced the focus on ‘empowerment of women’ within the lexicon of development work. During this period, a significant number of women joined NGOs because philanthropic work was perceived as an extension of their traditional gender roles of care work which limited resistance from their families. Though NGO work promised to deliver economic empowerment to beneficiaries from low income households, participation in NGO work proved empowering for women employees too as it significantly impacted their social identity and class positionings. Here, I argue that, instead of challenging the traditional gender roles of work which encouraged the participation of women in the 1990s, today, NGOs in India continue to reproduce them by not acknowledging and under-compensating the emotional labour performed by women at work. I also argue that NGOs create employment opportunities for women with no formal trainings in social work, which harbours gratitude that (invisibly) binds women to these organisations. However, the opportunity to form strong social identities which are celebrated by their communities acts as an incentive for the women to continue working with the NGOs. Based on the interviews of nine women employees from anti-trafficking organisations in Kolkata, India, this thesis explores the multi-tiered complexities that encompass NGO work in India.