Abstract
This article presents a study about three hundred ageing home-based women workers living in Karachi. Based on a larger research conducted in May-August 2014, this study’s primary empirical data, both quantitative and qualitative, covers everyday life of women who despite staggering challenges of poverty show resilience and cling to hope of a better future. The study shows that a perception of Pakistani women as docile and submissive is not true; such a portrait is false as it does not take into account women such as the ones this research profiles. The underlying idea behind this research and presenting it here, is (a) to seek recognition for women’s work that mostly goes unrecorded, (b) to draw attention of policy -planners, legislators, and non-government organisations to protect home-based aging women-workers’ rights within the ambit of labour laws, and, (c) to mobilise academics, scholars, and readers in general to a non-patriarchal view of work and wage-earning.
Keyword(s)
Aging women, home-based women workers, women & old age, work & gender, women’s wages