“Unveiling The Crisis: Gender-Based Violence Against Women in Tea Estates with Special Reference to The State of Assam”

Abstract

Women is a term that rejoice beauty, intelligence, sacrifice and devotion towards her family, society, and the nation. The testimony followed by history however, depicts a different picture of discrimination, exploitation, and harassment against women since ages. The recent trends in the evolution of ‘labour history’ in the academic field have injected new direction into the theories of Gender. In contemporary times, plantation societies are receiving critical as well as special attention as historians embark on gendered reappraisals of history that treat women as commodity and her biological appearance has become a curse to her, leading her towards dehumanization of womanhood. Women, on the other hand suffer this biasness of gender inequality, forced labour, false promises, prostitution, unwanted deception, and abuse without justifying her existence. This paper highlights the connections between oppressed and sexualized bodies of tea plantation workers and the hypocrisy of capitalist patriarchy in Assam. Even after accounting for more than fifty percent of the total workforce of the tea plantation industry in Assam, women workers remain marginalized in many aspects.  This study attempts to analyse the current status of tea industry in Assam against the backdrop of sexual division of labour, role of patriarchy, trade unions, sexual abuses, and subordination of women in tea estates. Besides the prevailing power dynamics in the family structure among the genders, the working world has also been dominated by unequal power dynamics that endanger women's safety and security. This paper is an effort to uncover the frightful notions of sexual harassment of women which grossly violates women's rights and dignity.