Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu: At sunrise, the salt pans in this southeastern district shimmer like glass and, by noon, feel like a furnace, with temperatures soaring to 40 deg C. 

The feet of the women workers—mostly Dalits—are cracked from years of standing in saline water. Their backs are bent under the weight of 25-kg salt sacks, carried from drying plots to storage sheds.

For this exhausting, debilitating work, they earn Rs 590 a day—less than the Rs 679 daily state minimum wage paid to skilled workers at a nearby power plant.

That wage is barely enough to live on—but what galls the women most is that they earn Rs 10 less than the men. Not because they work less. Not because the industry cannot afford to pay them equally. But simply, they say, because tradition demands it.

The Rs 10 missing from a woman’s wage is so small it can almost go unnoticed. But that invisibility makes it a daily, invisible denial of dignity.

The patriarchal tax is compounded across generations. 

“The mother accepted Rs 1 less—a supervisor recalls that was the gap in his parents’ time. Today, the daughter accepts Rs 10 less. If the pattern continues, a few decades from now, the granddaughter will take home Rs 100 less for the same work.”

The Tax That Preserves Power

It is clear that the Rs-10 patriarchal tax in Thoothukudi is not about profit. It appears to be a tool to preserve a social hierarchy that reinforces and reminds women of their place in power structures.

At the end of the month, a woman would have earned Rs 300 less than a man, less than half a day's wage. 

The underpaying is not because the owner needs the savings, but because underpaying women is a societal tradition that goes unchallenged.

In a 20-acre salt pan, where 25 people work, 20 of them women, the Rs-10 wage gap—you could call it a patriarchal tax on women—amounts to a savings of no more than Rs 6,000 for the employer. 

That is a negligible sum for the industry, yet it is a calculated reminder of who holds power and who is subservient.

Such stories are common in India's informal economy, which employs about 85% of India’s workforce of about 440 million, with marginalised communities constituting approximately 70% of this workforce: this is also where more than 81% of Indian women work. 

This is where the most pervasive forms of gendered labour exploitation occur, deeply rooted in caste and patriarchal structures within the production system, with women in the informal sector earning 34% less than their male counterparts.

This was evident in Thoothukudi, home to one of India’s major salt-producing belts.

The Paraiyars: Bottom Of The Heap

Tamil Nadu ranks second in salt production in India, with Thoothukudi district at the heart of the state’s salt industry. 

Spread over 25,000 acres, the industry in Thoothukudi contributes 70% of the state's salt output, playing a crucial role in the local economy, directly employing 30,000 workers.

Dalit women, primarily from the Paraiyar community, form the backbone of this labour-intensive industry. Known locally as uppalaththu kooli (salt pan labourers), their families have worked in the salt pans for generations. Historically landless, Paraiyars are concentrated in Tamil Nadu’s central and southern districts.

The salt pans, mostly leased from the government, are controlled by the Nadars—a powerful, dominant caste in the region. That Dalit women make up the majority of the workforce is no coincidence. 

Caste has long dictated who performs the most gruelling and degrading labour; gender only deepens this entrenched hierarchy.

Dalit men are slightly better off, often working in supervisory or processing roles. It is the women who remain trapped in the most physically demanding tasks.

“Our work is more tedious than theirs,” said G*, who is in her 50s and has worked at the pans for over 40 years. “We have to draw pan lines, refill the plots with brine, and sometimes collect the salt too. The men only collect salt—we largely have to do everything.”

Salt work is seasonal and closely tied to rainfall. The season typically begins in February and continues until August or September, depending on the monsoon. Workers are paid a daily wage.

“There’s no salary on days when there’s no work,” said G. “During the monsoon, we have no income. Even if we’re injured and return home midway through the day, we lose the entire day’s wage.”

A Microcosm Of A National, Global System

The wage gap in Thoothukudi’s salt pans isn’t an exception. It’s a microcosm of the global system that devalues women's labour, a pattern of exploitation rooted in patriarchal and capitalist structures. 

Even though 43% of Tamil Nadu women participated in the workforce (vs 32.5% nationally), according to Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data for 2020-21, the latest available, the state has one of India's widest gender pay gaps with women earning just 74 paise for every rupee men earn in regular salaried jobs.

This is not limited to Tamil Nadu. According to the ministry of agriculture’s data for 2020-21, a woman agriculture field labourer earns Rs 88 per day less than her male counterpart.

A national study using National Statistical Survey Organisation data found that gender wage inequality in India’s non-farm sector was higher among lower-paid workers and had risen between 2004–05 and 2019–20.  For example, in the construction sector, which employs 13 % of India’s informal workforce, according to the latest available data, women workers earn 30-40 % less than men.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, where women are the face of the garment industry, on average, women working in these factories earn 20% less than men. Even among workers engaged in similar production tasks, women still earn 8% less than men.

Wage discrimination in India disproportionately affects women from marginalised communities, especially those in informal, unregulated, and low-wage sectors, such as the Paraiyar women of Thoothukudi.

The Rigours Of Salt-Making

Despite being located along the coast, salt production here doesn’t use seawater. Instead, brine is pumped from underground borewells, which contain a higher concentration of salt, making it more efficient for extraction. 

The brine is moved through a series of shallow plots, each separated by narrow ridges of crystallized salt. As the water moves from one plot to the next, it evaporates under the scorching sun, increasing in salinity until salt crystals begin to form.

Armed with wooden paddles and aluminium baskets, the women undertake the most physically punishing tasks. They spend hours scraping crystallised salt with the paddles, then spreading it out to dry under the scorching sun. 

Once dried, they load the salt into baskets—each weighing around 25 kilograms—and carry them on their heads to be crushed into powder. On average, each woman hauls 200 to 250 such baskets a day.

Work begins at 6 am and continues until well past noon. There is no access to drinking water at the site—each woman brings a single one-litre bottle to last the entire shift. There are no toilets.

The Toll On Bodies

These conditions take a harsh toll on their bodies. Many suffer silently from recurring urinary tract infections, kidney stones, and uterine prolapse—caused by a combination of prolonged lifting and holding urine for hours at a time.

“These days, I experience severe headaches after work, and boils on my feet are common,” said M*, 20, who joined the salt pans after finishing class 10. “Many women who’ve been doing this for years can no longer bend or walk upright because of chronic back pain.”

The only safety gear provided is a pair of sunglasses meant to shield their eyes from the blinding glare of the salt. But even this minimal protection is largely unusable.

“They fall off when we bend down, so we don’t wear them,” said M, explaining the impracticality of the sunglasses. 

“The heat and light have worsened in recent years—we’re facing this more now than we did 10 or 15 years ago,” said M. “Our eyes also turn red when smoke is released from the nearby thermal power plants.”

The health impacts extend beyond the women working in the salt pans. Even young girls from the community—many of whom don’t work—show signs of disrupted menstrual cycles, PCOD, and thyroid disorders.

“My daughter’s periods aren’t regular unless she’s on medication,” said M. “Many women here struggle to conceive and often experience premature abortions.”

Menstruation poses its own set of challenges. With no toilets and no privacy, changing sanitary pads during work is impossible. The strain of intense physical labour during menstruation, combined with the lack of hygiene facilities, has led to widespread chronic gynaecological issues.

Even pregnancy offers no respite. Many women continue carrying heavy loads of salt well into their final months of pregnancy—often up until just before delivery.

‘This Is How It’s Always Been’

And yet, when I asked about their pay, it was clear—their wages did not reflect their labour. Their worth was dictated not by effort but by entrenched power structures.

Men earn Rs 600 per day. Women? Rs 590.

No one can say why. When asked if this was set by the contractor, most women respond reflexively - “This is how it has always been.”

R*, the 50-year-old supervisor of the salt pan, shrugged off the question. “It’s tradition,” he said. “Even during my childhood, my parents earned different wages with Rs 1 or Rs 1.50 less for women.”

This discrepancy is not new. 

A 2021 story in the People’s Archive of Rural India or PARI, a website, documented the same pattern, with women earning Rs 395 a day, men Rs 405. PARI reported that even in the 1970s, women were reportedly paid Rs 0.50 less per day. 

A 2018 study found male salt workers earning Rs 290, while women made Rs 280. Across decades, the Rs 10-gap (or its equivalent) has remained constant.

The gap persists despite a 2022 labour court order directing salt manufacturers to pay both male and female workers Rs 466 per day, in line with the state government’s minimum wage mandate.

The law could not change tradition. 

*All the salt pan workers interviewed shared their insights on the condition of anonymity.

(Manideep Gudela is Director at the Centre for Energy, Environment and People (CEEP) in Jaipur, leading research on justice in energy policy) 

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