‘In This Profession We Eat Dust’: Informal and Formal Solidarity among Women Urban Transportation Workers in Nepal

Abstract

This article considers the working lives of women who drive electric rickshaws, known as tempos, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the author examines drivers' precarious working conditions and the strategies they use in an effort to secure better conditions and job security. This case study illuminates the particulars of women tempo drivers' day-to-day experiences and also speaks to larger debates in feminist political economy surrounding women's entrance into the paid labour force, especially in South Asia. Women drivers provide a compelling example of how socio-economically disadvantaged women in industrializing and urbanizing cities of the global South find ways to create and protect spaces of dignified work and worker solidarity despite myriad challenges. Evidence from the research suggests that both informal and more formalized coping and resistance strategies are important mechanisms through which women seek to change the terms of their labour. Support for the research was provided by a US Student Fulbright, The University of Colorado at Boulder and California State University, Long Beach. The author would like to thank Kailash Rai and the journal's referees for their input and assistance.1. The exact date is debated, with a few individual women owning and driving tempos in the late 1980s. However, women entered the profession in greater numbers in the 1990s. Development and Change 51(3): 874-894.

Women construction workers in Nepal: Collectivities under precarious conditions

“…As in other sectors in Nepal (Grossman‐Thompson, 2020) and across the world, unequal gender relations were also perceived to be reproduced by union activists themselves although this was seen by women worker activists as something which was possible, and indeed imperative, to change.…”

“…7 7 In her study of the working lives of women tempo drivers in Kathmandu, Grossman‐Thomas (2020) also refers to informal strategies of collective resistance, which she describes as “meso‐level” coping strategies. …”