Due to increasingly severe financial compulsions, more and more women are forced to seek jobs outside the home despite the many difficulties requiring their attention/presence at home. Most of them get jobs only in the unorganised sector, particularly in the era of globalisation. Downsizing (or `rightsizing` as it is being called now), bans on new recruitment, restructuring, voluntary retirement schemes or early separation schemes all affect women first because, even today, despite the fact that around one in three families are headed by women, women`s income, generally, is still considered to be supplementary income.

For most women, their world of work is bounded by a `Lakshman rekha`. If a woman attends a meeting or is delayed in returning home, questions will be raised by everybody – family members and neighbours as well. She cannot go anywhere or attend any function or meeting without taking the permission of the husband, in-laws and also of the children, in many families. Thus, participation in trade union activities is generally ruled out for most women.

Anganwadi Workers

One of the jobs that women with moderate education, who cannot leave their families to go to far-off places, take are as anganwadi workers and helpers under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme of the Government of India.

Though they work directly for the Women and Child Development Ministry of the government and the scheme is well organised, the conditions of the anganwadi workers and helpers are equivalent to those in the unorganised sector. They are not recognised as government employees and are called `voluntary workers`. They are not paid wages; they are paid an `honorarium`. And this `honorarium` is so low that they feel humiliated, not `honoured`. They work for 6-7 hours a day and yet are called `part-time workers`. They are called `agents of change` but they are denied any opportunity to change their lives for the better. They make an immense contribution in shaping the future citizens – children below 6 years of age of India – but are helpless in shaping the future of their own children. They create awareness about nutritious food but cannot afford the same for their own families. They are answerable to everybody from the district collector to the village sarpanch to the president of the `Mothers` Committee` but neither the central government nor the state government takes the responsibility of improving their condition.

After spending two to three decades of their lives working in the ICDS, they are unceremoniously removed from service with nothing to fall back upon in their old age. They are not provided with any social security. The government, which should ideally be an exemplary employer, has resorted to the ploy of calling them volunteers to exploit the helplessness of these hapless anganwadi workers and helpers. The government boasts that it is implementing a unique scheme for children but hides the fact that it is doing so by extracting the services of the anganwadi workers and helpers and treating them almost like bonded labour.

Getting Organized as Workers

Anganwadi workers and helpers have realised that `even a mother does not feed her baby unless it cries`. They are getting organised and coming together to struggle in hundreds of thousands all over the country, demanding not `honorarium` but `honourable` working conditions, regularisation and decent wages. Their struggles have inspired the entire trade union movement in the country, including the unions of the organised sector workers. Though the participation of women workers in trade union activities has increased, the struggles of the anganwadi workers and helpers have earned a distinct place in the history of the trade union movement.

Women`s participation in trade union activities was negligible till recently. Despite facing many difficulties at the workplace and to a greater degree than their male colleagues, very few women workers came forward to join the trade unions and resist such oppression and exploitation. One obvious reason is their domestic responsibilities, which leaves them with little time and energy to spare for trade union activities. But another equally important reason is the patriarchal attitude of the male leaders of the trade unions, who are not ready to accept that women can become competent and effective trade union leaders. Women have not been encouraged to take up positions in decision-making bodies of the trade unions.

But the situation is changing, albeit very slowly. Today, more and more women are seen in the trade union struggles and campaigns. In some states, women form around one-third to one-half of the participants in the trade union rallies, demonstrations and other actions. Even women employees of banks and insurance companies, and teachers, who were earlier reluctant to come out on to the streets, are now enthusiastically participating in these campaigns, pasting posters, addressing meetings, etc. More women are taking responsibility for the day-to-day activities of the trade unions, and the anganwadi workers and helpers are in the forefront among such women trade union activists.

Most of the anganwadi workers and helpers come from socially oppressed and economically exploited sections of the society. A large number of them, particularly those employed in the initial phases of the ICDS, are single women (widowed, deserted, unmarried, etc.) with the sole responsibility of looking after their families. Their hard lives make them militant and ready to fight exploitation and oppression.

The work in an anganwadi centre, which includes teaching pre-school children, organising several events such as the `breast feeding week`, `mass annaprasana`, `healthy baby shows`, and organising meetings on occasions such as International Women`s Day, helps them develop skills that are useful for trade union organisation. The government teaches them these skills, which they utilise in organising their unions.

As all anganwadi workers and helpers are women, it was inevitable that some women would have to take up responsibilities in their own union. Wherever they were given responsibility, the anganwadi workers proved their abilities. In this way, anganwadi employees themselves realised that they could lead unions; they also proved to the male leadership that they were not inferior to any male trade union leader. The experience of several struggles and campaigns prove that once they are convinced of the importance and inevitability of the struggles to realise their demands and improve their conditions, nothing can stop them.

There are several examples. The anganwadi workers and helpers in the Hindi speaking region, considered to be ideologically backward and organisationally weak, are victims of feudal and patriarchal attitudes and are not inclined to participate in trade union struggles. They have forcefully demonstrated that they can overcome all these hurdles. In Himachal Pradesh, anganwadi workers and helpers held a relay hunger strike near the assembly in Shimla for more than 100 days; some of them had to spend such festivals as Karva Chauth and Diwali fasting in the camp, hundreds of kilometres away from their families. Police attacks and severe cold and incessant rain did not deter them. In Punjab and Haryana, similar struggles were conducted for prolonged periods to put pressure on the governments. In spite of the many difficulties, they persisted in their struggles and won their demands.

This determination to continue the struggle till they achieve a result, either positive or negative, keeping in regular contact with other members and making regular efforts to understand the various factors that influence their conditions and struggles, helps them to formulate strategies and learn through experience. They learn the importance of strengthening the organisation and expanding their struggles through their own experience.

No government has been soft on them because they are women. The struggles of the anganwadi workers and helpers in several states were sought to be severely oppressed by the government. In almost all the states in which they chose to struggle, they were arrested and false cases were filed against them. Water cannons and even mounted police have been used in some states to suppress their agitation. But nothing could stop them from continuing their struggle.

Though not so highly educated and earning a meagre remuneration, anganwadi workers and helpers have proved that women are in no way inferior to men in leading struggles and resisting repression, in spite of many difficulties at home. The anganwadi employees have also launched forms of struggle unique in the history of the Indian trade union movement. One such instance is the ten-day mass relay hunger strike in Delhi in July-August 2006 in which around 20,000 anganwadi workers and helpers participated from all over the country. In May 2007, around 10,000 workers courted arrest while marching to the Parliament.

The struggles of the anganwadi workers and helpers have established that if women workers are convinced of the cause of their struggle, they will participate wholeheartedly in the struggle even if it means that they will have to make sacrifices. They will march ahead shoulder to shoulder with their brethren in the trade union movement.