The Forgotten Role of Women in Darjeeling’s Tea Industry: A Gendered Lens on Labor, Legacy, and Resistance

Colonial Origins: How the Normalization of Gendered Labour Happened in Darjeeling Tea Plantations

The history of Darjeeling tea is romanticized, with visions of women gently picking leaves on foggy hills. But behind this idyllic image is a history of exploitation, firmly embedded in colonial tradition that institutionalized gendered work. This blog examines how British colonial policy in the 19th century influenced gender norms in the tea sector and how these disparities continue to exist today. 

The Beginnings of Tea Cultivation in Darjeeling

During the 1850s, British planters brought commercial tea production to Darjeeling and turned the region into a plantation economy. They met their labour needs by employing indentured and migrant workers mostly from Nepal and tribal groups. Women were recruited for this work deliberately not just because of their efficiency but also because of colonial stereotypes that identified them as being naturally capable of doing dainty work such as tea plucking. This assumption was embedded in a wider racialized and gendered logic whereby agricultural competence was equated with inborn feminine virtues as opposed to acquired know-how

Gendered Recruitment and the "Natural Dexterity" Myth

By 1890, women made up more than 60% of the Darjeeling tea workforce. Despite their numerical strength, their share did not equal fair treatment. The colonial regime encouraged the perception that women had "natural dexterity", an assumed innate ability to execute fine-plucking methods such as choosing "two leaves and a bud". This art was culturally recast as a continuation of domesticity, bolstering feminine notions of patience, obedience, and gentleness.

Structural Inequality and Its Legacy

Colonial gendering of labour produced a template for structural inequality that survives even after the independence of India. Women workers in Darjeeling tea plantations still face systemic issues. Though crucial to tea cultivation, women are paid paltry daily wages (e.g., ₹232 in recent reports), barely enough for survival. Workers are bound to plantations by housing dependencies but do not have ownership rights over the land they reside on, making them economically vulnerable. The colonial stereotypes of women workers as "immoral" or "alcoholic" continue to socially and economically marginalize them.

Economic Exploitation: A Legacy Written in Unequal Wages

The Darjeeling tea gardens, world-renowned for their high-grade tea, have been a place of systematic exploitation for many years. One of the oldest and most persistent forms of inequality is the gender wage gap, which was structured during the colonial era and still exists today. This blog explores the historical origins and contemporary realities of the inequity, throwing light on the struggles of women workers.

Colonial Origins of the Gendered Wage Gap

The gendered wage gap in Darjeeling’s tea plantations was deliberately enforced under British colonial rule. By the 1860s, women earned ₹4 per month compared to ₹5 for men, even when performing identical tasks. The colonial rationale for this disparity was rooted in patriarchal and economic logic. Women's earnings were relegated to the status of "supplementary," even as data showed their wages to be the mainstay of survival for tea worker families.

The colonial state rationalized lower pay for women by characterizing their labour as an extension of domesticity, reasserting feminine obedience and patience stereotypes while devaluing their skill. This structural undervaluing of women's labour provided a basis for structural inequality that would continue long after India gained independence.

Enduring Inequality: Gendered Labor and Exploitation in India's Tea Plantations

Even after India's independence in 1947, gendered labor hierarchies in tea estates persisted, with women dominating low-paid plucking jobs while men occupied higher-paying supervisory roles. This division restricted women's skill advancement and sustained wage gaps. Even today, pluckers, mostly women, earn only ₹232 per day (Tea Board of India, 2023), far below a living wage, leaving them struggling with basic needs. They also lack land ownership, remaining dependent on plantation-provided housing, which reinforces their exploitation. Additionally, social stigmas portraying them as "immoral" or "alcoholic" further marginalize them, weakening their ability to advocate for better conditions.

Resistance from the Fields: Women as Workers and Activists

Women's labour movements have repeatedly come into conflict with male-led unions, which traditionally emphasize wage concerns over gendered issues such as reproductive health, sexual harassment, and child care. In spite of all these challenges, women have kept pushing for change, slowly transforming plantation culture. Yet, they continue to face patriarchal management systems and corporate greenwashing, which exploits their labor without enhancing their working lives. These micro-resistances have been vital in achieving incremental changes but encounter major obstacles in bringing about systemic reform.

Pioneers of Change: Women Who Reshaped the Industry

In spite of all these challenges, there are women who have led the way to change in the industry. Lassi Tamang, for example, was the first woman factory manager at Jungpana Tea Estate, defying gender expectations by learning technical processing skills and guiding young women to take up factory jobs.

Her role created a pipeline of women in technical roles, defying traditional gender roles. One other trailblazer is Sonia Jabbar, an enlightened plantation owner of Naxalbari Estate, who revolutionized her estate as an ecological and worker-conducive model farm. She instituted girl's scholarships to schools, health camps in the community, gender audits, and safety workplaces, creating a new benchmark for the industry.