Introduction

In this chapter, we explore the process of producing an urban café in India as a ‘women- only’ workspace which claims to empower women through employment and entrepreneurial skilling. Our interpretive ethnographic exploration comprising participant observation of the kitchen space and the dining hall of the café reflexively analyses various notions of ‘women’ and ‘worker’ and the interconnecting affect that acts upon these notions and is acted upon by them within the production and embodiment of space. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari (1988), our spatial analysis of affect not only exposes the dominating neoliberal forces that prioritize logic of commodification over alternate logics but also shows how these forces invest human bodies with an intense desire to become a ‘better woman worker’. This occurs through the acquisition of skills that are submitted to the hierarchized logics running through various bodies. Thus, we argue the following: (1) a ‘woman worker’ performs a desire to connect with other bodies that are constructed as higher and better than other bodies, the predominant metric used in creating this hierarchization being proximity of the bodies to the market and its embodiment of market logics, and (2) a ‘woman worker’ who attempts to move closer to the market logics and embody them as neoliberal forces tends to become dominant in the café space. However, within the kitchen space, there are also sporadic intense desires to connect with the bodies who are engaging in solidarity movements, connections and embodiment through sharing joy, precarity and support which militate against embodiment of market logics.

Foodwork is often seen as a way through which women express and connect with social organizations such as families (Brenton, 2017). As reorganizing of care and productive work is emerging in urban areas, foodwork is also shifting rapidly into a form of paid work, carried out in gendered eateries where men occupy the positions of chefs and cooking staff (Ray, 2016). Against this context, we explore a café in Western India which claims to be ‘women only’, where women engage with the emerging space of commodified foodwork by selling their foodwork- related skills and cooking.