Paper short abstract:

The handloom sector in Assam largely comprises of female weavers working in informal and precarious conditions. This research examines the impact of policies and interventions on ‘women’s empowerment’ by government and non-government entities and how they impact the lives of these women.

Paper long abstract:

The term ‘women’s empowerment’ has become a buzzword in the last two decades, with its meaning and approaches to it changing through policies and interventions at various levels of implementation. Existing literature on empowerment use a linear notion of empowerment, as women either becoming empowered or not empowered. However, women’s everyday lived realities consist of multiple axes of power and power relations.

It is in this context that the research looks at women’s empowerment and agency within the context of handloom weavers in Assam (India) who are unorganised and are working in precarious conditions, and then locate the impact of the different approaches to women’s empowerment taken by government and non-government entities in the lives of the weavers. The research also examines the lived realities of the women and how they understand empowerment, contest and negotiate it in their everyday lives.

Through an ethnographic study in Sualkuchi (Assam), the findings are situated in the larger context of changes that we are witnessing in the Global South, within a neoliberal and care capitalism paradigm and the rise of far-right politics. The research contributes to the literature on gender, work and informal labour and brings forth an important aspect of the loom owner and weaver relations which has not been explored in the literature previously – a form of bonded labour relation as a result of the system of ‘advance payment’ taken out by the weavers from the loom owners and what it means for women’s agency and empowerment.