Page 31 - A Gender-Sensitive Indian Foreign Policy- Why? and How?

Indian Council
of World Affairs

ethnographic field work in the UAE and understanding the transnational
mobility of Indian migrant women, domestic workers. I invite her to make
her remarks. Thank you.

Dr. Bindulakshami Thank you so much for inviting me to this very extremely excellent and
Pattadath (Associate important panel. The speakers before me have eloquently spoken about
Professor, Advanced
Centre for Women’s gender sensitive foreign policy and the feminist perspectives on foreign
Studies, School of policy. I am not an expert in international relations or in foreign policy
Development Studies,
TISS, Mumbai) matters. However I feel that thinking about and working around gender
sensitive foreign policy cannot be taken into account without looking at an
important aspect of a small segment of migrant workers, the transnational
migrant women domestic workers, who are contributing immensely to the
nation’s development.

Since 2006 onwards, I’ve been actively writing and engaging with
transnational migration particularly focusing on the lives of women migrant
domestic workers who have been travelling from Indian to the Middle East.
I have conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the United Arab
Emirates (UAE), primarily focusing on Dubai and Sharjah, two prominent
emirates of UAE. So what I am trying to bring here today is some points and
reflections from my ongoing research among transnational women migrants
and I hope that will generate more discussions as we go along.

What is gender-sensitive foreign policy? What is the point of departure to
begin the conversation around foreign policy? Earlier speakers have already
eloquently articulated these aspects so I am not planning to touch upon and
elaborate these questions. So let me begin with a story of a migrant woman
whom I have met and interacted for a long time during my fieldwork in UAE.

Suja is an Indian migrant domestic worker I met in 2007 in Dubai. She
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was working in one of the Indian households as a live-in domestic during
the time I met her. Suja has a very long and complicated story of migration
trajectory; she entered an abusive marital relationship at an early age. Her
narratives reflected on years of trauma of domestic violence and how she
finally mustered the courage to leave the abusive husband and home when
she got an opportunity through an agent to travel abroad as a migrant
domestic worker. She left her infant child with her mother as she embarked
the journey of migration. In order to facilitate this journey, Suja did not have
any money, so her mother mortgaged the tiny home and the land so that Suja
can pay the agent adequate money to facilitate the travel.

Suja reached Dubai with many aspirations and hopes however the first home
where she worked was not favourable to her. She faced constant harassment
and humiliation, Suja finally decided to escape from that house. Her passport
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9 All names have been anonymised to protect the identity of the participants.

A GENDER-SENSITIVE INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY Why? and How?