How the Ahmedabad automation study 'misses out' on Marxism and women’s labour

 

By Rajiv Shah  

A few days ago, I attended a press conference for the release of a study examining the impact of automation on women workers in Ahmedabad’s construction sector. Conducted by Geeta Thatra and Saloni Mundra for Aajeevika Bureau and Work Fair and Free, the study immediately caught my attention—particularly a passing reference in the presentation to how Marxist theory tends to reduce women’s oppression to class relations and economic structures such as private property, production, and wage labour.

The report, “Building Futures: Automation and Gender Disparities in Construction – The Case of Ahmedabad, Gujarat,” draws on sociologist and feminist theorist Judy Wajcman, known for her critique of Marxist approaches to gender in her 1991 book Feminism Confronts Technology. Wajcman argues that Marxist analyses often overlook how gendered power dynamics shape technology itself, not just the social relations surrounding it.

Without passing judgment on Wajcman’s critique, I was curious to see how far Thatra and Mundra’s 40-page study engages with class relations—if at all. Its central concern is automation. The authors analysed four construction projects, including one in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship GIFT City near Gandhinagar. They note that compared with cities such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, where automation has advanced rapidly, in Ahmedabad “technological change has been slower and incremental.”

Yet even this limited automation, the study observes, has led to large-scale exclusion of construction workers—especially women. While it never explicitly connects this exclusion to the profit-seeking logic of builders or the privileged classes, it concedes that “women workers remain systematically excluded from ‘skilled’ and emerging technical roles, constrained by gendered assumptions, discriminatory hiring, and structural barriers to upward mobility.”

The report further points out that “the growing reliance on subcontracting and outsourcing specialised tasks increases the distance between women workers and principal employers and reinforces wage disparities and occupational segregation.” Automation, it adds, “deepens women’s marginalisation and consolidates existing asymmetries in construction.”

At this point, one can’t help asking: isn’t this precisely what Marxian theory predicts—that changes in the productive forces (like automation) transform relations of production, with capitalists gaining at workers’ expense? Isn’t the exclusion of women from better-paid, technical roles part of this process, ensuring higher profits for builders?

The study highlights that “automation disproportionately affects low-skilled, manual, and feminised tasks such as masonry support, material handling, and concrete mixing, while expanding roles requiring technical training or machine operation in ways that systematically exclude women workers.” With advanced formwork and precast methods reducing the need for masonry and plastering, women’s participation has sharply declined.

“Excavators and bulldozers (popularly called JCBs),” the report notes, “have reduced workforce needs for site preparation by nearly 50 per cent, with women workers most affected.” Similarly, cranes, hoists, and concrete pumps have replaced head-loading and manual transport.

Managers and contractors openly admit that women are being sidelined. One contractor remarked that the sight of women carrying bricks on their heads has become rare—“maybe only on bungalow sites.” The researchers observed a 75–85 per cent decline in such manual tasks, most of which were previously performed by women.

The study further explains that most women enter construction through family-based migration, usually working as “helpers” alongside their husbands. They earn less, are concentrated in hazardous, low-paid tasks labelled “unskilled,” and have almost no access to technical or supervisory roles. “Women are almost absent from processes involving on-site fabrication, assembling, or moulding,” the report says, quoting a contractor: “It takes two men to lift these saria (steel reinforcements), but with women, it’d take five.” Another adds: “Steel and shuttering work is risky for women, so we don’t allow it.”

Even where automation could ease physical strain, it has paradoxically led to more exclusion. The study notes that “automated rebar cutting and bending machines” remain operated almost entirely by men because of “safety discourses” and gendered perceptions. “Automation thus reduces manual labour but exacerbates gendered labour displacement,” the authors write.

Underlying this exclusion are deep-seated stereotypes. As one builder put it, “Women are more engaged in cleaning as this is in their nature.” Such narratives mark cleaning and support work as “feminine” and “unskilled,” legitimising lower pay and lesser status. Supervisors often discourage women from even observing machine operations, reportedly telling them, “This is not your work. You’re only meant to be a helper.”

The study quotes a safety officer who, when asked about women’s absence from skill training programmes, replied, “Who would then make tea?”—a remark that lays bare how cultural and workplace norms intertwine to reinforce subordination.

While the authors interpret these barriers as constraints on “women’s upward mobility,” they do not frame them as part of a wider system of profit-driven exploitation. Nevertheless, the data they present is stark: women earn 10–20 per cent less than male “helpers” and 40–50 per cent less than male “skilled” workers. Wages are typically paid to the male partner in a working pair, rendering women’s labour invisible and underpaid. Payments below minimum wage are common, perpetuating women’s economic insecurity.

For solutions, the study turns to policy reform rather than structural critique. It recommends gender-responsive skilling and on-the-job training in emerging technologies; employment targets for women in public projects; strict enforcement of the POSH Act (Prevention of Sexual Harassment); ratification of ILO Convention 190; regular inspections for wages and facilities; and maternity protection with 26 weeks of paid leave and childcare support.

These are important and necessary steps. Yet, one might still ask: can workplace reforms alone resolve inequalities that stem from the very structure of profit-driven production? The Ahmedabad study powerfully documents how automation reshapes women’s work—but in doing so, it also invites a deeper question about the relationship between technology, gender, and class in an economy built on exclusion itself.