skip to content

Economic Justice panelist Bandana Purkayastha presents Ford Foundation study on Nepali Women

Published on October, 27 2009 at 12:00am

Economic Justice panelist Bandana Purkayastha presents Ford Foundation study on Nepali Women

“Never a Right in Sight” was presented on October 24 at the Human Rights in the USA Conference organized by UConn’s Human Rights Institute and School of Law

Chaired by Davita Glasberg, Head of Dept. of Sociology – UConn, the Economic Justice panel also included Sociology Alumna Angie Beeman (Ph.D.) who presented “Keeping Hearth and Home: Economic Justice and Resistance to Predatory Lending and Housing Foreclosure” with Univ. of Texas – Arlington Asst. Professor Colleen Casey, and Jon Green, Executive Director of Working Families Party.

 

Bandana Purkayastha’s paper and presentation illuminates the perspective of immigrant female workers in the informal economy to underscore their particular vulnerability. “Their access to a job is directly influenced by how they are seen, and we have found that Nepali immigrant domestic workers are invisible even within the South Asian community.” Purkayastha was keen however to emphasize that we don't deny their agency and equally important for this group of immigrant women, their political rights and citizenship status. She was also keen to credit Southern Utah University Asst. Professor, Shobha Hamal Gurung, who conducted the interviews and survey data analysis that was supported by several South Asian community groups in Boston and New York, and funded by the Ford Foundation.

 

Purkayastha and Gurung have previously shared their findings on Nepali women at the Low-Wage Work, Migration and Gender Conference, Univ. of Illinois – Chicago, sponsored by Ford Foundation and Jane Addams Hull House. Dr. Gurung also contributed to Living Our Religions (Kumarian Press) edited by Anjana Narayan and Bandana Purkayastha.

A one-day Conference on the HUMAN RIGHTS OF DOMESTIC WORKERS – Hope in Hard Times – funded in part by a grant from the Human Rights Institute will take place at UConn - Storrs on MARCH 27, 2010. Contact fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu or 860. 486. 5083 for updates.