‘Can sex work or erotic dance be called as work? ’
- Independent Ink
- Jan 2
- 9 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
What is work? And who defines work? And what has morality got to do with how we define or understand work? And what is art? Does all of life eventually evolve into art?
By Baishali Chatterjee
What is work?
And who defines work?
Can commercial surrogacy or sex work be called as work?
And what has morality got to do with how we define or understand work?
And what is art?
Does all of life eventually evolve into art?
Who gets to speak and whose voices matter?
In the part two of the series, Baishali Chatterjee is in conversation with filmmaker Paromita Vohra on her film Working Girls, made as part of the Laws of Social Reproduction project, which attempts to address some of these questions. They discuss various issues ranging from what film-making is about and the illusion of choice, to how Paromita’s own journey as a filmmaker has evolved over the last 30 years.
Baishali: Thanks, Paromita for making the time despite your busy schedule. I would like us to start off with this question which occurred to me while watching the film; why is the film called ‘Working Girls’ and not ‘Working Women’ and was that a conscious decision?
Paromita: I think ‘Working Woman’ is just a descriptor, of the women who work, right? But working girl is an idea. It's an idea of a woman who goes out into the world and who has an identity as somebody who ‘works’. But it's also an identity that's intertwined with pleasure and agency, with freedom, with wanting to have an identity as a working person. So there is a legacy to the term ‘working girl’.
You have seen depictions of working girls in certain ways, but not as women who ‘labour’. So the title is reclaiming the many different meanings of what it means to be a woman, a woman who ‘works’, a woman who wants to have a full, autonomous life in the world.
Baishali: So could you tell us more about the idea that gave birth to the film? Was the idea of the film looking at women's work in different ways always there with you, or was it because of your collaboration with the Laws of Social Reproduction project?
Paromita: Yes, the film was built on research for the Laws of Social Reproduction project. The project had already been created and was already ongoing when they asked me if I would like to make a film. So, it is the project that created the framework of these five sectors of work as being spaces of social reproduction, where law plays certain kinds of roles.
Those sectors are sex work, domestic work, erotic dance, paid and unpaid housework and surrogacy and egg donation.
So, these are the five sectors that the Laws of Social Reproduction Project is researching on and theorizing from. The film therefore also took on the same framework as an entry point.
Additionally, the researchers were also in touch with certain organizations in the field. So the filmmaking team also engaged with those organizations. Then, as work on the film began to grow we reached out to other people. We added other sectors like the Asha workers, and the layer of the history of law which frames these realities.
I believe that films do the work of research in a different way. The medium of film can achieve certain things, which allow us to look at the world differently, allowing us to make connections which are emotional, sensory, as well as factual, historical and social. So, the fact that a film can combine all of these things in certain ways through the narratives of different people allowed us to extrapolate from the framework of social reproduction.
Baishali: When a research project is translated into a film, the visual medium often makes it more appealing and helps audiences grasp its ideas more easily. In that sense, the film can strengthen or amplify the project’s core messages. Would you say that’s true in the case of Laws of Social Reproduction?
Paromita: It’s not about more appealing -- that implies a kind of hierarchy where art is merely a receptacle for information. And for that matter I think research is also appealing. I don't think that one thing is better than the other. I think they do two different things. They function in two different ways.
When I'm reading a piece of research, I'm thinking differently. And when I'm watching a film, I think differently. I may be thinking about the same things, but the way in which I think about them can be different.
So, I think that the research and the film work hand in hand. They illuminate each other. And they help each other to grow. Because making a film is also a form of research, right?
All art is a form of research into the human condition.
What does it mean to be a person?
What does it mean to live in the world?
What are the ways in which we try to make our life work? What are the barriers that come to us?
So, one of the things that a film can capture in a very telegraphic way is simply that even a two-minute conversation can communicate to you an entire life. And you see that your own life and the life of the other person on screen are intersecting. And a film perhaps allows you to feel that very strongly and to think about that and therefore see the world differently in a somatic way.
Baishali: While research has its own value, reaching audiences who aren’t specialists can sometimes be challenging. Do you think using film as a medium helps communicate the core message of a research project more effectively to a wider audience?
Paromita: So, like you said, the idea of a film works in disseminating the ideas of the research, its key messages, its intent to a non-specialist audience because the intent of the Laws Of Social Reproduction project is to make invisible work visible and to create a certain respect for that work. The film enhances that intent by drawing on the lived experiences of women and their work as a way of understanding how policies and laws should be framed.
Baishali: Beyond the opportunity to collaborate with the project, did you have this idea in you to make a film on women's work in India otherwise?
Paromita: The idea of women and work has permeated all my work. My very first film is about women and work. It was made in 1995. It's about a credit cooperative in Bombay called Annapurna, which was about women who perform invisible labour in the unorganized sector, and how women workers were eased out of the organized work force. It was about a collective which organized unorganized workers through a credit cooperative.
I also made a film called ‘Where’s Sandra?’, which is about stereotypes of Christian women in Bombay. But, eventually, the Christian woman in Bombay is also a working woman. The fact that she was out of the house to work and that working also meant dressing a certain way, with a certain air -- that is also part and parcel of the image of the working woman in Bombay in the 1950s.
So, in some way or the other, whether culturally or experientially, the idea of women and work has always been very important to me. And I also identify myself a lot through my work. And as a filmmaker and as a woman who is an artist, it takes a lot for people to recognize that it's hard work. Moreover, there are numerous frameworks that render the artistic aspect of a work invisible if it wears its politics on its sleeve and vice versa, and this is truer for women artists, whose artistry and intellect are rarely engaged with.
Work as an aspect of women's lives either never gets taken seriously or it’s always made to look like an exception, but actually it is so much a part and parcel of women's lives -- the work that they do.
Baishali: Yes, I agree. Work is never the central theme of our lives, right? It’s not central in the way it would be in a man's life, for example.
Paromita: That's what people say. But that is because they define work as something you do going into a corporate office or going to a factory and earning money for it, right? The idea of a working woman seems to imply that there is a kind of woman who works and a kind of woman who doesn't work. So, when you say, ‘working girl’, it's a concept.
All women work all the time.
What is the one thing that you see in the film? Women are working from morning to night. The work of looking after a child, the work of cooking, sustaining us, the work of caring for each other -- the work of sustaining life itself -- women are doing it from morning till night.
Some women are doing it as a profession and some are doing it as a role, but even if you are doing it as a profession, you are still supposed to also do it in the role of a mother, wife, daughter, sisters, whatever, right?
But for a man being the provider is both his work and his role, and both are treated with respect. The idea that work is related to profit and power, not care and the living of life, underlies the way we devalue women’s work and very beings. So, I think that the care work that women do should be recognized as essential work that makes the world go around and not as something divine and nature-given. We should redefine the very notion of work and how people are supposed to be recognized and valued and paid for their work.
Baishali: In my work also, I find it always challenging to explain care as a central issue in terms of how revolutionary it is to care for yourself, the family, and the planet by extension. So, my question is, do you see us ever reaching that point where we move from seeing care as an ordinary everyday good to actually seeing how fundamental it is to our existence?
Paromita: I mean, who knows? But one has to keep trying, right? I think that there are two kinds of things. One is that when you say it's a revolutionary act, but that it is not part of the language of revolution. The language of revolution itself is very masculine.
It is also rooted in ideas of structural change, which speak about equality, but how do we define equality and how do we define the society that we wish to live in, as a result of that revolution? So very often the imagination of the society which we wish to make is about dismantling the current world structures. And then, yes, we will create a world in which workers are equal. But if your definition of work is not equal, then can that be an equal world?
We have to imagine a very different kind of world rooted in an expansive and empathetic equality. However, if the imagination of defining equality is unequal, if you see certain people as workers but don't see the other people as workers, then how are you imagining equality? For whom are you imagining that equality?
For example, if you look down on certain forms of work, if you look down on sex work or domestic work, if you yourself reiterate these notions of divine labour of motherhood, then how can you have an equal society?
Will the idea of care be woven into the way we re-imagine an equal society?
These conversations need to be a fundamental part of our larger conversations. They should not be in silos.
Editor's Note: This is the first part of a two part interview with filmmaker Paromita Vohra. The second part has also been published as a lead story on the homepage.
Please also see the first interview in this series -- link below.
Dangerous sex, invisible lives: An insightful interview on sex work, domestic work, erotic dance, paid and unpaid housework, commercial surrogacy, egg donation, and other issue concerning women’s rights in society. Baishali Chatterjee in conversation with Dr Prabha Kotiswaran, a faculty at King’s College London, and also the Principal Investigator of the project, on the different dimensions of the Laws of Social Reproduction project.
Baishali Chatterjee is a senior development worker with over 20 years of experience advancing gender justice across the Global South. She has led transformative programmes on gender equality, SGBV, climate and gender, and women’s economic justice. She holds a postgraduate degree in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She's currently based in Bangalore.
Photos courtesy Paromita Vohra.
All stils from the film: Working Girls.