International Women’s Day: A life of harsh reality and struggle

A woman working in a brick kiln located near Pirangut in Pune. Women along with their husbands toil at the unit from 3 am to 6 pm, and eagerly wait for a one-hour break they get for lunch at noon. They migrate from other places to labour at the unit from October to June, as the kiln is shut during the monsoon. When these workers are not working in kilns, they are often working in agricultural fields at their native places. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

Updated on: Mar 08, 2018 9:46 PM IST

News

Share via

• 
• 
• 
• 

Copy link

• 

1/7

View Photos in a new improved layout

Updated on Mar 08, 2018 9:46 PM

A woman working in a brick kiln located near Pirangut in Pune. Women along with their husbands toil at the unit from 3 am to 6 pm, and eagerly wait for a one-hour break they get for lunch at noon. They migrate from other places to labour at the unit from October to June, as the kiln is shut during the monsoon. When these workers are not working in kilns, they are often working in agricultural fields at their native places. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

2/7

View Photos in a new improved layout

Updated on Mar 08, 2018 9:46 PM

According to the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), at least 10 million people work in kilns even as there are no official figures for the number of people employed to cut, shape and bake clay-fired bricks, mostly by hand, in tens of thousands of brick kilns in India. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

3/7

View Photos in a new improved layout

Updated on Mar 08, 2018 9:46 PM

The women brick-kiln workers are often the invisible labourers who have to fight for their rights. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

4/7

View Photos in a new improved layout

Updated on Mar 08, 2018 9:46 PM

As most of the women labourers are migrants and illiterate, they are exploited and poorly paid. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

5/7

View Photos in a new improved layout

Updated on Mar 08, 2018 9:46 PM

Many of the women workers are migrants and live near the brick kilns with little access to proper food or nutrition, healthcare and medical facilities. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

6/7

View Photos in a new improved layout

Updated on Mar 08, 2018 9:46 PM

As the brick industry is one of the unorganised industries in India, women workers do not get the status which the men enjoy. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

7/7

View Photos in a new improved layout

Updated on Mar 08, 2018 9:46 PM

As many women workers at kilns are not given the scope of doing skilled work, they express dissatisfaction on working environments. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)