SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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The National Institute for Working Life was closed down on 1 July 2007

National Institute for Working Life (NIWL), Stockholm:

South Asia related research at the Institute

The Swedish National Institute for Working Life (NIWL) established cooperation with the Indian institute Society for Working Life, based in New Delhi. The collaboration was launched during the second International Congress on Women, Work and Health in Rio de Janeiro 1999. Then the Swedish delegation offered to arrange the coming conference in Stockholm in June 2002, and India announced that it would host the 2005 conference. As it turned out the Indian group became heavily involved already in the planning for the Stockholm conference (consisting of 850 participants from 74 countries), and the Swedish group equally contributed to plan for the New Delhi conference in November 2005, see below.
Associate Professor Hanna Westberg was a leading force behind NIWL's involvement in WWH in Stockholm in 2002, and also participated in the planning for the 2005 conference in India.

In 2004, the researcher Carina Bildt (photo to the left) received SEK 75 000 as a Swedish Research Links grant from Sida and the Swedish Research Council for a project on ”Indian women at work – women’s condition at the labour market and in the workplaces”, a project she will carry out in collaboration with researchers at the Indian Society for Working Life. The project consists of three concrete field studies on vulnerable women: Women moving from the countryside to the capital; Elderly Women; and Women without education.
Carina Bildt has previously visited India along with her colleagues Hanna Westberg and Lena Karlqvist, representing the Institute for Working Life at the ”Safety Health & Environment: Challenges and Opportunities for Women” conference held in India as a preparatory conference before the International Women Work & Health congress held in November 2005 (see below).
She now works for the International Programme Office for Education and Training (Internationella Programkontoret) in Visby.

• The Fourth International Congress on Women, Work & Health (WWH) was arranged in New Delhi, India, 27–30 November 2005. The conference was organised by the Indian Society For Working Life in collaboration with the Swedish National Institute for Working Life (Arbetslivsinstitutet). Previous WWH conferences have been held in Barcelona 1996, Rio de Janeiro 1999 and in Stockholm 2002. Keynote speakers representing both academia and practitioners initiated debate and open-ended, thought provoking discussions on the issues which formed the main themes of the Congress, and for the first time short films/video sessions were initiated. Associate Professor Sunita Kaistha, Jesus & Mary College, New Delhi, was secretary-general of the Women Work & Health congress, to which came more than 700 delegates from 61 countries. More information on the congress.
NIWL’s Press Officer Judit Hadnagy accompanied the Swedish delegation to New Delhi and published several reports on the web site of NIWL, including a text about plans for a joint Indo-Swedish research project called ”Working environment of Indian ironers”, about the women standing in the street corners of New Delhi ironing clothes, with heavy irons, weighing over seven kilo and heated over a coal fire.