Masculinities & paid domestic-care labour in India

This article focuses on male domestic-care workers (MDCWs) in India. It explores how constructed notions of masculinity interplay with labour market structures, enable forms of labour discipline and shape labour subjectivities. The article details performative and embodied gendered practices engaged in by MDCWs, illuminates the interplay of spatial and temporal aspects of paid domestic-care work with gendered skill sets and labour roles, and connects the differentiated masculinities performed by MDCWs to the broader political economy of domestic-care labour. It also highlights how MDCWs utilise their gender to express degrees of agency vis-à-vis employers and others. The article argues that MDCWs perform masculinities in variegated ways in the face of stigma, marginalisation, and relations of servitude. These performances are not devoid of agency, but are commoditised within the political economy of the domesticcare sector and are framed within patriarchal gender norms as ‘protective care’ or as work requiring other masculine attributes.