By Aishwarya Nagabhushan
In the mid-2000s, India’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector emerged as a global leader, creating millions of job opportunities for the Indian population. Specifically, Bengaluru, the technology capital of India, is home to over 200,000 BPO employees and hosts a significant percentage of the country’s BPOs. Recently, Bengaluru’s growing BPO industry has started to offer more opportunities to women. However, these jobs often require women to work at night because the BPO industry generally operates in the time zones of the United States (US) and Canada. While the BPO sector continues to increase economic opportunities for women, it has also raised societal concerns about women’s safety, as many Indian women find themselves commuting through cities with high rates of violence at night. This concern is reflected in the 2023-2024 Women, Peace and Security Index, which ranked India 128 out of 177 in terms of women’s security, highlighting the country’s ongoing struggle to provide basic security for Indian women. Therefore, my study aims to explore the following question:
How do physical mobility and ideas about respectability affect the future economic opportunities of women employed in business process outsourcing centers (BPOs), working the night shift, in Bengaluru, India?
For this research, it is important to define two key concepts. Physical mobility is defined as an Indian woman’s ability to freely move around public spaces of her choice and use public transportation without the physical or perceived threat of harassment and sexual assault (Mahadevia, Darshini, and Lathia, 2019). Respectability is the idea that a working Indian woman’s career must have limits that align with Indian family norms, including the expectation that family always comes first and that the working woman’s obligations will change once she is married (Radhakrishnan, 2009). Additionally, it includes having a safe job that protects a woman’s dignity and purity, meaning it often limits her interactions with public spaces where the risk of assault may threaten this virtue (Radhakrishnan, 2009).
To answer my research question, I conducted 13 semi-structured interviews with Indian women working the night shift in BPOs during summer 2024. These interviews uncovered key themes surrounding safety, health, fertility concerns, changes in night shift perceptions post-marriage, and strict company policies.
The findings reveal that both physical mobility and respectability will significantly shape the future economic opportunities of Indian women who work the night shift in BPOs. While 10 out of the 13 women I interviewed stated that traveling to work was relatively safe, all 10 women posited that they still had to be very aware of their surroundings when navigating public spaces. Specifically, they suggested that commuting to work felt much safer than navigating general public spaces in Bengaluru. The data from multiple interviews also indicated that parents often adopt safety measures such as self-defense classes and regular check-ins to increase their children’s safety and their own perception of their children’s safety.
Even with these precautions, safety concerns continue to influence how these women share their experiences with public spaces. For example, many women chose not to discuss incidents of harassment and assault with parents, friends, or community members to avoid increasing concerns about their safety. Additionally, since members of society were already skeptical about their occupations, any harm experienced while commuting to work may have been blamed on these women. Despite all of these challenges, the lack of complete physical mobility has not significantly hindered their ability to access these jobs because of the transportation services and security policies established by BPO companies.
Specifically, of the 13 women interviewed, 2 reported that their companies provided drop-off services back to their residences, but not pickups. Additionally, a male escort was present in each cab to ensure these women got home safely by waiting with the cab until the woman entered her home. Conversely, 10 out of 13 women stated that their companies offered transportation services only if they left work before 6 am. If they chose not to use the company-provided transportation, funded by their travel allowance, they were informed that the company would not permit them to leave work until 6 am due to safety concerns, even though some of their shifts concluded at 5:30 am. Furthermore, these women are not compensated for the additional half-hour they must wait. Despite these policies conflicting with their busy schedules and proving inconvenient, participants accepted and even preferred the extra thirty-minute wait as it ensured their safety.
These company policies place the burden of women’s safety onto the women themselves by restricting their interactions with public spaces at night. These policies diminish women’s agency instead of addressing the perpetrators and societal norms that continue to endanger women. Conversely, viewing these policies through the lens of India’s sociocultural norms reveals that while the company’s safety measures may limit women’s agency, they also enable them to pursue nighttime jobs. Consequently, many participants said they would not have accepted this position without their companies’ security measures and facilities.
Contrarily, ideas of respectability will significantly limit the future economic opportunities for women employed in BPOs. Among the 12 unmarried women, 10 plan to marry in the future. Of these 10 women, 3 reported that the night shift would likely not be viewed as an appropriate job post-marriage. Additionally, 3 other women mentioned that while they would like to or would be okay with working the night shift after marriage, their ability to do so would heavily depend on their spouse’s opinion. They stated that working the night shift would make it difficult to fulfill their domestic responsibilities and was not socially acceptable because it may call into question a woman’s moral and sexual purity.
Health concerns also emerged as a significant theme for 5 out of the 13 women I interviewed. These women cited health issues as a concern for their families, communities, and friends. One participant explained that her parents were worried that the lack of proper sleep, appetite, and constant feelings of fatigue would lead to severe long-term health consequences. When asked what health consequences they were concerned about, the participant noted that her parents worried about how this would affect her menstrual cycle. This participant’s experiences highlight how an Indian woman’s worth is tied to fertility even before she is married.
Furthermore, it demonstrates the role of respectability and how working the night shift may not be considered a “safe job” because it risks limiting her role as a traditional Indian woman in the future.
In conclusion, physical mobility alone did not appear to significantly impact the future economic opportunities of the 13 women I interviewed. However, the combination of physical mobility and concerns about respectability may significantly limit an Indian woman’s ability to pursue greater economic opportunities in the future.
Bio: Aishwarya Nagabhushan is a BA Candidate in International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She conducted her research in Bangalore, India in summer 2024 sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.
References
Mahadevia, Darshini, and Saumya Lathia. 2019.”Women’s Safety and Public Spaces: Lessons from the Sabarmati Riverfront, India.”Public Space in the New Urban Agenda: Research into Implementation 4 (2): 154-168. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v4i2.2049.
Radhakrishnan, Smitha. 2009.”Professional Women, Good Families: Respectable Femininity and the Cultural Politics of a “New” India.”Qualitative Sociology 32:195-212. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11133-009-9125-5.
Rao, Geetha. “Bangalore Home to over 2 Lakh BPO Staff.” The Economic Times, n.d. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/bangalore-home-t o-over-2-lakh-bpo-staff/articleshow/4924685.cms?from=mdr.
“Women Peace and Security Index.”2023. Georgetown Institute for Women Peace and Security. https://giwps.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/WPS-Index-executive-summa ry.pdf#page=2.
