About the Centre:
Centre for Labour Law Research and Advocacy (CLLRA), at National Law University, Delhi, is established to reinvigorate the constitutional philosophy of ‘decent work for all’ by ensuring dignity at work and enjoyment of equal social, cultural and economic opportunities for workers. We focus on understanding the labour policy paradigm from an interdisciplinary perspective and conversate with social realities to undertake meaningful advocacy and outreach initiatives.
With the objective of bringing forth interdisciplinary areas in labour before the students and other interested participants, we organise discussions and debates on various aspects of labour. Under our Labour Law Discussion Series, we are organising a panel discussion on
bar dancing, with a special focus on the form of labour and working conditions of women.
About the Panel Discussion:
Erotic labour is often sought to be disciplined through arbitrary and fluid notions of public morality, decency, and dignity. The social and policy discourses on bar dancing reduce the cultural and socially reproductive labour into merely a means of leisure and catering to prurient interests. The erotic labour by bar dancers to earn livelihood and climb the social and economic ladder threatened the State of Maharashtra that claimed it was obscene and impinged on women’s dignity. It reacted with repeated attempts to strictly regulate the business of bars and dancing therein. Law was used as a tool for the patriarchal circumscription of female labour based on morality, obscenity and women’s dignity. It seemed to resist the possible repositioning of the caste-class-gender nexus facilitated by renewed forms of erotic labour in the globalised society. Though, in January 2019, the Supreme Court read this as a fundamental rights issue under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution, the time limit on bar dance and prohibition on note/coin showering were upheld. Hence, the populist cultural notions continue to cast a shadow over the issue of bar dance as a form of labor. Another form of resistance comes from few activists who view bar
dance as an entrenchment of gender-cum-caste-based exploitation and commodification of the female body. Yet, other feminist critiques have also questioned the exclusion of socially reproductive labour forms, such as bar dance, from the State policy discourses on protection
of labour rights.
A number of questions deserve our attention. For instance, what are the salient socioeconomic features of bar dancing as a form of labour? How do we understand the social dynamics (e.g., the caster-class-gender nexus) of bar dancing as a form of work? Is there a need for separate regulatory framework to recognise and protect socially reproductive labour?
What are employment practices involved in bar dancing? Moving away from the moralitydecency-dignity framework, is there a need to regulate the working conditions of bar dancers through the labour rights paradigm? Is labour law an answer to deconstruct ‘shame’ and other
exclusion practices against the bar dancers? Have the non-regulation of their working conditions invisibilised the bar dancers as workers? How do the voices of bar dancers get mobilised and what do they say about their work?
The Panel Discussion seeks your intellectual engagement with such questions.
Eminent Panelists:
- Adv. Veena Gowda, Advocate, High Court & Family Courts at Mumbai
- Dr. Sameena Dalwai, Professor, Jindal Global Law School.
- Dr. Brahma Prakash, Assistant Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Moderator: Dr. Sophy K.J., Associate Professor and Director, Centre for Labour Law Research and Advocacy (CLLRA), National Law University, Delhi.
Other details:
Date: Monday, 31st October, 2022.
Time: 3 PM to 4.30 PM
Venue: Room No. 406, National Law University, Delhi, Sector 14, Dwarka, New Delhi
Registration Link: https://forms.gle/Jp3riUhVqV27if9e8
The Panel Discussion is open for all. There is no participation fee.
For more details click HERE