A Sociological Study of Workplace Discrimination and Exploitation Faced by Domestic Women Workers in Mathura City

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This paper presents a sociological examination of the workplace discrimination and exploitation experienced by domestic women workers in Mathura City. Mathura, though widely known as a pilgrimage centre, is also a rapidly urbanising town in which women from diverse social backgrounds are increasingly engaged as domestic helpers within private households. Domestic work in India operates largely outside the framework of formal labour regulation, leaving workers without written contracts, fixed wages, or social security, and rendering the employer household a largely unmonitored workplace. Against this backdrop, the study explores the socio-economic profile of domestic women workers and the forms of discrimination and exploitation they encounter in relation to caste, income, and migration status, while situating their experiences within the gendered devaluation of domestic labour.

The research adopts a descriptive design combining a structured questionnaire with semi-structured interviews. Data were obtained from 80 domestic women workers across selected urban and peri-urban localities of Mathura, and were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) alongside thematic analysis of the interview narratives. The findings indicate that domestic work in the city is dominated by women from marginalised caste groups and low-income households, that migrant workers are particularly exposed to wage exploitation and job insecurity, and that the absence of formal protections sustains long hours, irregular pay, and limited dignity at work. The study underlines the need for legal recognition, regulated wages, welfare provisions, and employer sensitisation to advance decent work for this essential but neglected segment of the informal workforce.

Keywords: domestic women workers; workplace discrimination; informal labour; caste; migration; decent work; Mathura; social inequality.

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