Asian Research Journal of Arts & Social Sciences

Gender, Labour, and Marginality in Modern India: From Colonial Reform to Postcolonial Migration, Care, and Social Justice

2026-07-18T11:52:51+00:00

This narrative review examines the relationship between gender, labour, and marginality in India from the late colonial period to the present. It considers how colonial governance, missionary intervention, and indigenous reform movements shaped the recognition and regulation of women's work, and how comparable patterns of invisibility and undervaluation remain evident in postcolonial labour markets. The review synthesises peer-reviewed historical, economic, sociological, legal, and gender-studies scholarship, supplemented by selected authoritative institutional reports. It addresses female labour force participation, the feminisation of agriculture, gendered migration, unpaid care work, domestic and platform-based employment, caste-inflected marginality, and major policy interventions. Across these domains, the evidence indicates that women's work remains concentrated in informal and weakly protected forms of employment and is constrained by unequal care responsibilities and intersecting social hierarchies. The review interprets contemporary patterns as historically connected to, but not wholly determined by, earlier labour classifications and institutional arrangements. It concludes that employment policy must be accompanied by care infrastructure, enforceable labour protections, improved intersectional data, and support for collective organisation. Priorities for research include longitudinal analysis of institutional continuity, platform governance, and the differentiated experiences of women across caste, region, religion, and migration status.

Operational and Organisational Stress Experienced by Women Civil Police Officers in the Modern Era: A Critical Review

2026-07-24T10:07:32+00:00

Policing remains one of the most psychologically demanding civil occupations, and the entry of women into what was historically a male preserve has generated a distinct body of research on gendered occupational stress. This critical review synthesises the international literature on operational and organisational stress among women civil police officers, drawing on peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and April 2026. Operational stressors, arising from exposure to violence, trauma and the physical demands of frontline duty, are examined alongside organisational stressors, including gender discrimination, sexual and gender-based harassment, tokenism and constrained career progression. The review further considers the compounding influence of work-family conflict, the psychological and physical health consequences of chronic occupational strain, and the coping strategies and organisational interventions that have been evaluated to date. Across settings as diverse as India, Sweden, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, a consistent pattern emerges: while operational exposure to trauma is broadly comparable between men and women, organisational stressors linked to occupational culture, numerical minority status and structural exclusion disproportionately affect women officers and appear more strongly associated with adverse mental health outcomes. The review identifies persistent gaps in longitudinal and intersectional research, in the evaluation of organisational-level interventions, and in evidence from under-represented regions. It concludes that meaningful improvement in the working lives of women police officers depends less on individual resilience training than on structural reform of police occupational culture, supervisory practice and human resource policy.

Linguistic Typology: A Critical Review of Metacoding and Syntactic Structure across Languages

2026-07-24T10:12:52+00:00

Linguistic typology seeks to describe the structural diversity of the world's languages and to explain the recurrent patterns, or universals, that constrain this diversity. A central but often under-examined concept within this enterprise is metacoding: the principled allocation of formal marking resources, such as case, agreement, and word order, across grammatical relations and semantic or pragmatic categories according to markedness, economy, and iconic motivation. This review synthesises recent typological scholarship on metacoding and its bearing on syntactic structure across languages, drawing on comparative concepts, differential argument marking, alignment typology, morphological complexity trade-offs, and the growing role of large-scale computational databases in typological inference. The review traces how metacoding principles account for asymmetries in the marking of subjects and objects, for the distribution of ergative and accusative alignment, and for the coevolution of nominal and verbal grammatical marking. It further considers how phylogenetic and areal methods have reshaped debates about whether word-order correlations reflect cognitive universals or lineage-specific historical accidents, and how the loss of linguistic diversity through language endangerment threatens the empirical base on which such debates depend. Methodological issues concerning sampling, representativeness, and the comparability of descriptive categories across languages receive particular attention, since these issues bear directly on the reliability of typological generalisations. The review concludes that metacoding offers a unifying, functionally motivated account of why languages allocate overt marking unevenly across categories, while cautioning that the evidential basis for many typological universals remains uneven across language families and geographical regions. Future research directions, together with the principal limitations of the current evidence base, are outlined.

Caregivers’ Perspectives on Maternal and Child Health Service Use in Makete District, Tanzania: A Qualitative Study

2026-06-30T03:48:09+00:00

Maternal and child health service utilisation remains an important concern in efforts to reduce preventable morbidity and mortality among children under five in Tanzania. This qualitative study explored the social and cultural dimensions at the household level that shape the use of maternal and child health care services in Makete District, Tanzania. The study involved 20 adult female caretakers of children under five years from Bulongwa and Utanziwa villages. Sixteen participants took part in in-depth interviews, while four participated in informal conversations. The study was informed by sociocultural theory, which supported attention to the meanings, interpretations, and experiences through which caretakers understood maternal and child health services. The findings showed that clinic attendance was viewed by many caretakers as beneficial for monitoring child health and detecting early signs of illness. However, short birth intervals, agricultural work demands, and stigma associated with child illness sometimes contributed to delayed or incomplete clinic attendance. Caretakers generally recognised the value of vaccines, but experiences of pain, swelling, and fear of adverse effects contributed to vaccine hesitancy among some participants. Trust in biomedical services encouraged service use, whereas perceived limitations of these services led some caretakers to rely on traditional healing. The study concludes that maternal and child health interventions should consider caregivers’ local meanings and lived experiences to strengthen service utilisation.

Utilisation of Maternal and Child Healthcare Services across the Continuum of Care and Its Determinants in Nuh District, Haryana, India: Evidence from National Family Health Survey-5

2026-07-16T08:39:35+00:00

Background: This study examines the utilisation of maternal and child healthcare services across the continuum of care and its socioeconomic determinants in Nuh district, Haryana, using data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21). The objective was to assess service coverage across antenatal care, institutional delivery, postnatal care and child health indicators, and to identify key determinants influencing completion of the continuum of care.

Methods: A cross-sectional design was used, based on district-specific NFHS-5 microdata. Survey-weighted proportions were estimated, and binary logistic regression models were applied to examine associations between selected socioeconomic factors and maternal and child health outcomes.

Results: The findings indicate substantial attrition across the continuum of care. Although antenatal care utilisation was relatively high, only 46.2% of women received four or more antenatal visits, and 18.5% consumed at least 100 iron-folic acid tablets. Institutional delivery coverage was 78.9%, while postnatal care within 48 hours was 70.6%. The maternal continuum-of-care completion rate was 37.5%, which declined to 17.0% when child immunisation was included. High levels of child undernutrition were observed, with stunting affecting 44.1% of children under five. Regression analysis showed that maternal education and caste were significant predictors of service utilisation at different stages of the continuum. Secondary or higher education was positively associated with institutional delivery and postnatal care. Significant disparities were also observed across caste categories, particularly in antenatal care completion and adherence to the continuum of care. Child immunisation outcomes varied across socioeconomic groups.

Conclusion: The study highlights persistent inequities in maternal and child health service utilisation in Nuh district and underscores the need for targeted health-system strengthening interventions across the continuum of care.

Meaning-making in Influencer Careers: A Phenomenological Study of Digital Creators in Banten, Indonesia

2026-07-25T12:55:57+00:00

Background: The growth of social media platforms has established influencer work as an emerging digital career shaped by audience engagement, commercial opportunities, professional identity, and community relationships.

Aims: This study explores how influencers in Banten interpret their careers, how their personal and professional experiences shape their digital identities, and how they negotiate their status as influencers within local community life.

Study Design: This study employed a qualitative research design grounded in the constructivist paradigm and a phenomenological approach.

Place and Duration of Study: The study involved active influencers based in Banten Province, Indonesia. In-depth interviews were conducted in Serang City and Serang Regency from September to October 2025.

Methodology: Six influencers were selected through purposive sampling. Participants were required to be active users of social media, have at least 10,000 followers, possess experience in producing digital content, and have participated in promotional or commercial collaborations. Primary data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews and were supported by observations and relevant documentation. The data were analysed through seven phenomenological stages: repeated reading of interview transcripts, identification of significant statements, formulation of meanings, clustering of themes, development of a comprehensive description, synthesis of the essence of the participants’ experiences, and participant validation. Data credibility was strengthened through source triangulation and member checking.

Results: The analysis identified five interrelated themes: career reorientation through digital income, career development through adaptation and audience response, professionalism reflected in consistency, innovation, and credibility, contextual management of online and community identities, and regional contribution through local culture, language, culinary content, and creative networks. The participants did not perceive influencer work as an effortless form of digital visibility. Instead, they regarded it as a demanding and disciplined occupation that requires continuous content production, audience trust, adaptation to platform dynamics, and social responsibility.

Conclusion: For the six participants, the meaning of an influencer career was constructed through their ability to transform digital visibility into a sustainable source of livelihood while maintaining credibility and remaining socially connected to their communities in Banten. However, the findings are limited to the cases examined and cannot be used to determine the broader economic impact of influencers across Banten Province.