“They Wanted Wages in Cash, We Wanted Wages in Foodgrain”: Women’s ‘Other’ Issues While Working in Rural Employment Programmes in India

In India, women workers working in earlier EGS (Employment Guarantee Scheme) or present MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) are equally needy; they earn similar wages and do similar manual work like the men working with them. These are the programmes known for gender sensitized outlook and framework. However, women workers have different survival strategies to mitigate famine. Their perspectives, their aspirations are always different than the male workers. This paper is based on field work data from Nashik, Maharashtra and explores the forms of discrimination based on gender, age, region and its implications on the marginalized from the marginal sections. The paper narrates the different livelihood and survival strategies of the women workers. The discrimination they face while working on the schemes and their abilities and inabilities to fight the discrimination involved in the wage based poverty reduction programmes are also analyzed in the paper.