Articles by Praveena Kodoth

The paper discusses the case of emigrant women domestic workers from Kerala, a state which has had a long history of migration of workers in this segment. It draws attention to the critical failure of the social science scholarship to address the question of poor women migrants. It also provides an overview of state policy on migration and underlines its complicity in generating regulatory gaps. The paper engages with the gendering of citizenship and sovereignty through a comparison of the state policy on migrant women workers and the experience of three segments of this workforce - emigrant nurses, domestic workers and outmigrant fish processing workers. It then considers the question of agency in the context of women workers who are thrust into the position of breadwinners for their families and, finally, the question of responsible state intervention.

Media and Modernity: Communications, Women and the State in India by Robin Jeffrey (New Delhi: Permanent Black), 2010; pp 320, Rs 695.

Dowry and female seclusion are aspects of a system of property regulation that restrict women's ability to directly own and control property. In this context, it is hardly surprising that agrarian reform has reproduced female disadvantage in property rights and accentuated female seclusion linked to social mobility. The author examines substantial gender disparity in property rights over land, rising levels of dowry and the constraints women face in taking up paid work, etc, which pose serious questions for the livelihood security of poor women in Kerala and West Bengal.

This paper critically examines the claim that women in Kerala have substantial property rights arising out of agrarian and social reform and the practice of matriliny. It argues that land reform strengthened the patriarchal conjugal framework of property relations in the state, compromising women's independent right to property. While agriculture is no longer considered a viable occupation in the state, greater male occupational mobility has shifted the balance of responsibility for farming and family property increasingly to women. However, this work is being under-reported, is not necessarily 'visible' and comes at the cost of paid employment. For some, social mobility has afforded greater leisure but, along with declining inheritance rights, has led to the rising economic insecurity and vulnerability of women.