The Tamil word Sumangali means “happily married woman”. The word is, however, used to designate a form of labour exploitation, that of young women from rural areas, usually adolescents. These young girls are hired at the age of 14 or 15, sometimes younger, for a period 3 to 5 years, and are paid a salary below the minimum wage fixed by Indian legislation. They live in isolation, in factories far away from villages. It is promised that they will receive a “dowry” at the end of their contract, allowing them to get married and live “happily married”. The world trade union for industry has denounced this practice, which is common place in the state of Tamil Nadu, in the south of India. A coordination meeting took place at the beginning of March in Amsterdam to evaluate the different on-going projects and to make them more effective.
Almost slavery. The trade unions, along with NGOs, denounce this practice which is close to slavery; it has developed primarily in spinning and slightly less so in clothing manufacturing. The practice has been prohibited in India since 2009, however, according to information given by SOMO – a Dutch research organisation looking at the practices of multinationals — Tamil Nadu has 1,600 factories, mainly for cotton spinning, which employ around 400,000 workers, of which almost 100,000 are young girls recruited through the Sumangali system.
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