By exploring the experiences of women cashew processing workers in Kerala, India, this study examines the interlinkages between paid cashew processing work and unpaid domestic work. Drawing on feminist qualitative research, it analyses how these two forms of work are intertwined through women’s everyday lives and embodied experiences. Situating the study within broader feminist scholarship on gendered labour in Kerala, it argues that women experience paid and unpaid work as a continuum, interlinked through women’s embodied labour. This continuum is shaped by caste, class and the nature of employment, temporary or permanent, government or private. The study further reflects on how survival becomes the core component of both forms of work and how women’s meanings, values and emotions challenge the binary between productive and reproductive labour. By placing women’s voices and embodied experiences at the centre of analysis, this study contributes to intersectional feminist understandings of work and labour embodiment within Kerala’s gendered labour scholarship.
Abi Babu (Thu,) studied this question.