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Plural Market Publics: Digital Platforms and Women’s Economic Participation in Jaipur’s Handicraft Sector

Published in January - June 2026 (Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2026)

Plural Market Publics: Digital Platforms and Women’s Economic Participation in Jaipur’s Handicraft Sector - Issue cover

Abstract

In India’s handicraft sector, women have long been central to production yet excluded from visible market spaces and denied public authority within them. This paper asks what happens when selling moves online in the context of gendered spheres of craft production and entrepreneurship. Drawing on interviews with ten women entrepreneurs in Jaipur and observation of bazaars and digital selling practices, it examines how digital platforms enable middle-class women to enter new markets, build customer relationships, and establish legitimacy in ways the physical bazaar rarely allowed. The study finds not one market but several coexisting market publics: bazaars, exhibitions, and platform-based communities, each with its own rules of participation and recognition. This plurality is theorized as a plural public sphere. Women’s digital selling constitutes alternative market publics: arenas built through circulation, conversation and trust rather than shopfronts, and organized around values of craft, care and community as much as profit. Platforms do more than widen access: they alter the structure of participation. They reduce reliance on male intermediaries, create direct channels to customers, and allow women to appear, on their own terms, as market actors. Yet these opportunities remain uneven, reaching a resourceful section of the middle class: visibility must be maintained, authenticity performed, and unpredictable algorithms, platform dependence and rising labor demands managed. Digital platforms, the paper concludes, do not dissolve gendered market hierarchies but reorganize them, opening real yet conditional ground on which women negotiate recognition as legitimate economic actors. The paper thus contributes to discussions of gender, digital platforms, and economic inclusion.

Authors (1)

Divya Mehta
ORCID

Centre for Studies of Plural S...

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Article Information

Article ID:
PCS110007
Paper ID:
PCS-01-000007
Pages:
47-70
Published Date:
2026-02-14
JATS XML:
JATS XML

How to Cite

Mehta, D. (2026). Plural Market Publics: Digital Platforms and Women’s Economic Participation in Jaipur’s Handicraft Sector. Politics, Culture and Society, 1(1), 47-70. https://doi.org/10.68243/jpcs.2026.v1.i1.000007

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