The voice of the marginalised

None of the men I know provide for their families. It is the women who cannot watch their children go hungry who work

Lahore is home to hundreds if not thousands of young girls and women who have left their native villages to find work in the big city. What is life like for them and how close are their dreams to being fulfilled?

Mona and I got to know each other when I first moved to Lahore. Although she is only twenty years old, her life is already a reader in class struggle, patriarchal oppressiveness and feminist political thought. Mona’s day begins at 6:30am when she wakes up to make breakfast for her household, which includes her three sisters, a brother, a sister’s husband and their one-year-old baby. All six-and-a-half of them squeeze into a single rented room for which they pay Rs5,000 a month. Since this also covers their electricity bill, they are not allowed to use anything except for a single lightbulb and a fan. Last summer, they scraped together enough to buy a tiny refrigerator but it has long since been disconnected because the landlord wouldn’t allow it.

Mona arrives at the home of her first employer at 9am and leaves the third and last home she services at 5pm. This is her schedule six days a week. She doesn’t take public holidays. Once every three or four months she wants to take a week off to visit her parents in her village in Okara District. The women she works for complain that a week is too much. This is because her work is entirely informal — there is no contract between her and any of her employers — which means there is no provision for annual leave, sick leave and of course, no health benefits. If she gets anything extra such as Eidi or used clothing, it is often followed by reminders such as “we do so much for you”.

Working three different jobs, Mona barely makes it to minimum wage. But this is the best arrangement she’s ever had, she tells me. “Two years ago I used to work from 9am to 11pm for another baaji and I was only paid Rs8,000. I have also worked as a live-in maid where I earned only Rs7,000. When I first came from my village I was only nine years old. I lived with a family whose youngest daughter was as old as I was. They only paid me Rs600. I could not even reach up to the kitchen sink and had to use a footstool to wash dishes.”

Convention 189 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) calls attention to the plight of people like Mona, calling them the most marginalised of workers. The Convention calls on nation states to institute policies that would require written contracts for all types of domestic work. It demands decent wages and fair terms of employment, including paid annual leave, private living quarters for live-in workers, normal hours of work, provision of proper food, minimum wages, and pre-agreed terms of termination. Pakistan has not yet agreed to ratify the Convention.

While abuse, torture and even murder of domestic workers is common in Pakistan, particularly in the Punjab, it is the everyday and mundane stories of violence that don’t make it to the newsfeed. Mona recounts tales of how she has been slapped, threatened and imprisoned by her various employers in Lahore’s DHA. She is matter of fact while describing these experiences because she says everyone she knows who works in people’s homes has faced such circumstances. She describes the kind of food she has had to endure working full-time in people’s homes. It has included a daily ration of half-eaten sides of bread that an employer’s children would leave uneaten at breakfast or the suki roti that another employer would leave for her in the freezer, which was meant to serve as her dinner.

What do you do with the money you earn, Mona? “My sisters and I work to pay for my brother and youngest sister’s school and academy fees. We buy groceries from whatever is left over. We also send money to our mother in the village so she can buy seeds and fertiliser for the land she leases every year to grow wheat. It costs Rs70,000 to lease just one acre of land and my mother hardly makes enough to tide herself and my father over.”

What do you think about men, Mona? They are kharab, and why? “Because they follow me when I leave my house and call after me. One man threw a stone at me two weeks ago when I told him off for following me.” Why don’t you yell for help to shame them, Mona? “No one helps. No one does anything. If you fight back it becomes a tamasha for everyone to watch.”

“None of the men I know — my brother-in-law, my father, my uncles — provide for their families. It is the women who cannot watch their children go hungry who work, whether it is on a farm or in people’s homes. Women will do anything to feed and clothe their children. As girls we also get dragged with our mothers to do farm work but now we are here in the city to earn a better living.”

What about the boys, Mona? “The boys are given parathas to eat while we get rotis. Parents beg their sons to go to school but put us to work.” Do you think it is the mothers that make their boys kharab by making them parathas, Mona? “Why shouldn’t they? Boys are good to their mothers even if they aren’t good to their wives. All the men I know hit their wives in my village but no one hits their mothers. The men I know don’t share their wages with their wives but they bring them to their mothers. This is a lesson in patriarchy’s complex realities for me.”

At the end of the day, does anyone speak for Mona? Perhaps, girls like her who toil their youth away don’t have the right to a decent wage, dignified living and working conditions. Nor do they have the right to public space, an education or even a paratha.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2016.

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