Between 2022 and 2024, a Cividep team, led by Rekha Chakravarthi (Director, Research & Advocacy) and Research Associate Kaveri M.T., joined forces with Prof. Supriya RoyChowdhury from the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) and they set out to follow the lives of 184 women garment workers. With support from two labour unions and one community-based organisation – the Garment Labour Union (GLU), Karnataka Garment Workers Union (KGWU), and Munnade Social Organisation – the team was able to do extensive field research in Bengaluru, Mysuru, and Kanakapura. The workers were a mix of intra-state and inter-state migrants, working intense shifts in garment factories across Karnataka ...

Findings from the Report

The team surveyed 184 women workers — 123 intra-state migrants and 61 inter-state migrants — using a mixed-method approach that combined individual meetings in their homes with broader analysis of industry-wide impacts. The findings uncovered the following:

• Wages and Earnings: While the minimum wage in the garment sector is ₹10,330 (basic + DA), other sectors pay significantly more, with 61% of workers reporting a desire for better wages and 82% working overtime, though only 58% were paid fairly for the extra hours. 16% of these women were forced to take on additional paid work (domestic work, tailoring, selling flowers) just to make ends meet.
• Violence and Abuse in Factories: Verbal abuse was reported by 100% of the workers, with 68% facing restrictions on toilet breaks, 66% pointing to disciplinary measures such as isolation, 61% experiencing physical abuse and 39% reporting sexual harassment.
• Violence within Homes:Almost 60% of workers said they faced various forms of domestic violence and harassment within the household. Looking at violence as an instrument of production in factories and as a form of control within the household, the study found a normalisation of violence on women’s bodies in both these spaces.
• Unionisation and Health Impacts: Only 5-10% of the workforce is unionised across five different unions in Bengaluru and Mysuru. Their relentless schedules, working an average of 16 hours a day between factory and household chores, left them physically overworked and mentally drained.
• Generational Labour: Perhaps the most striking discovery was that despite all their hard work, these women are unable to break the cycle of informal labour. Around 60% of workers’ children are now employed in the service sector, earning between ₹10,000-₹15,000 per month — a stark indication that poverty and low-wage labour persist across generations.
• The Crisis of Social Reproduction: Women’s labour underlies the reproduction and sustenance of a labour force that is harnessed by the capitalist system as a necessary but low-paid generator of surplus value. Capitalist production systems create multiple stressors under which social reproduction takes place, while at the same time, depending upon social reproduction for the creation and maintenance of its most critical component, labour.