This book explores one of the major themes in contemporary India � the nature, worth and reality of women�s work through comprehensive, reader-friendly journalistic accounts from across the country. While the majority of the stories included in this collection focuses on urban realities, there are some truly remarkable reports from rural India as well. Together, these features plot transformations of various kinds. What does it mean, for instance, when a woman sweeper at a railway station becomes a porter? Do masculinist assumptions undergo a change in the process? What consequences emerge when women migrate on their own for employment � both for themselves and their families? Does the fact that women professionals today could choose not to follow their husbands abroad because they value their own jobs at home too much, suggest the emergence of new family dynamics in urban India? The questions that these pieces raise are as numerous as they are intriguing. And each story attempts to bring to the reader the scenario on the ground through the voices of women workers themselves. The words they use often express their traumas and tribulations, but there is also talk of hope and a display of courage that reflects a will to change destiny.