“Women Workers in India’s Unorganized Sector: Struggles and Strategies”

When we talk about India’s workforce, we often picture busy factories, air-conditioned offices, or sprawling agricultural fields. But there’s a massive section of workers who remain largely invisible despite their crucial contributions to the economy. These are the women in India’s unorganized sector-the domestic helpers, construction workers, home-based laborers, waste pickers, and countless others who work without contracts, job security, or social protection. According to government data, over 81% of India’s total employment comes from the unorganized sector, and women constitute a disproportionate share of this workforce. Their stories of struggle, resilience, and the ongoing efforts to organize and empower them form a critical chapter in India’s development narrative.

The many faces of informal employment 🔗

Women in the unorganized sector don’t fit into a single category. Their work is as diverse as it is essential, spanning multiple industries and locations. Understanding these different forms of employment helps us recognize the breadth of challenges they face.

Domestic workers: the invisible workforce 🔗

Perhaps no group is more invisible than domestic workers. They cook, clean, care for children and elderly family members, and manage households-yet their work is often undervalued and unrecognized. Estimates suggest India has anywhere between 4.2 million to over 50 million domestic workers, with the wide range reflecting how poorly documented this sector is. The vast majority are women, many from marginalized communities.

Consider Lakshmi, a domestic worker in Delhi who works in four different homes each day, starting at 6 AM and finishing by noon. She earns roughly 8,000 rupees per month but has no written contract, no guarantee of work tomorrow, and no benefits if she falls sick. Her story is typical. Most domestic workers operate in private homes where labor laws rarely reach, making them vulnerable to exploitation, wage theft, and even abuse.

Home-based workers and piece-rate laborers 🔗

Another significant group consists of women who work from their homes, stitching garments, rolling incense sticks, making handicrafts, or assembling small products. These home-based workers often work on a piece-rate basis, earning money based on how many items they produce rather than the hours they work. This system pressures them to work long hours for meager returns, often involving their children in the work to meet production targets.

The advantage of home-based work is flexibility-women can manage household responsibilities while earning. The disadvantage is severe exploitation. Middlemen and contractors take substantial cuts, leaving workers with barely sustainable incomes. Without direct contact with employers or formal recognition as workers, they have little bargaining power.

Construction workers: building the nation without a safety net 🔗

Visit any construction site in India, and you’ll see women carrying bricks, mixing cement, and performing physically demanding tasks alongside men. Women form almost half the workforce in India’s construction sector, which is the second-largest employer after agriculture. Yet they face significant discrimination and challenges.

Most women in construction remain unskilled throughout their working lives, while men systematically upgrade their skills to become masons, supervisors, and contractors. Women join as helpers and remain helpers, earning lower wages than their male counterparts for similar work. The work environment is hazardous, with little attention to safety measures, and women construction workers face additional risks including sexual harassment and lack of facilities like separate toilets or childcare provisions at work sites.

Other informal occupations 🔗

Beyond these major categories, women work as street vendors, agricultural laborers, waste pickers, and workers in small-scale industries like beedi-making and tanneries. Each occupation carries its own set of challenges, but common threads run through all these experiences: precarious employment, low earnings, and absence of legal protection.

The multifaceted challenges women workers face 🔗

Working in the unorganized sector means navigating a complex web of challenges that formal sector workers rarely encounter. These difficulties compound each other, creating cycles of poverty and vulnerability that are difficult to escape.

Economic insecurity and wage exploitation 🔗

The most immediate challenge is economic. Domestic workers in urban areas have been documented earning as low as 49 rupees per hour, significantly below any reasonable living wage. Payment is often irregular or delayed, and workers have little recourse if wages are withheld. Many women report earning between 30 to 50 rupees per day for backbreaking work, with no overtime pay regardless of how many hours they actually work.

Wage discrimination based on gender is rampant. In construction, for instance, women earn substantially less than men for the same work. The lack of written contracts means there’s no legal basis to challenge these disparities. For piece-rate workers, the rates set by middlemen are arbitrary and exploitative, with workers having no say in negotiations.

Complete absence of job security 🔗

Job security is virtually non-existent in the informal sector. Workers can be dismissed without notice, without reason, and without any compensation. Seasonal employment patterns mean months without work. During economic downturns or crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, informal workers are the first to lose their livelihoods with no unemployment benefits or social safety nets to fall back on.

This insecurity creates a climate of fear. Workers hesitate to speak up about mistreatment, knowing they can be easily replaced. They accept exploitative conditions because refusing work might mean their families go hungry. This power imbalance fundamentally undermines any notion of dignity of labor.

Lack of social security and benefits 🔗

Formal sector employees in India receive benefits like provident fund contributions, health insurance, maternity leave, and pension plans. Women in the unorganized sector receive none of these protections. When they fall sick, they lose income with no paid sick leave. Maternal healthcare and benefits are virtually absent, forcing women to return to physically demanding work soon after childbirth.

The absence of health insurance is particularly devastating. Informal workers are exposed to occupational hazards-construction workers face accidents, domestic workers suffer from musculoskeletal problems and chemical exposure from cleaning agents, and all face chronic health issues from overwork and poor nutrition. Medical emergencies push families deeper into debt, creating poverty traps that span generations.

Workplace harassment and violence 🔗

Sexual harassment is a pervasive problem, especially for domestic workers who labor in private homes and construction workers in male-dominated environments. UN Women reports that women domestic workers face heightened risks of discrimination, exploitation, and violence due to their gender, caste, and extremely precarious employment conditions.

The isolated nature of domestic work makes reporting harassment particularly difficult. Women fear losing their jobs if they complain, and the private nature of homes means there are rarely witnesses. Legal protections like the Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act exist but are poorly implemented for informal workers, especially domestic workers whose workplaces-private homes-fall into legal gray areas.

Social stigma and discrimination 🔗

Social attitudes compound economic exploitation. Domestic work and other informal occupations are viewed as low-status jobs, and the women who perform them face discrimination based on caste, class, and gender. Many domestic workers belong to Dalit or tribal communities, facing additional layers of prejudice and exclusion.

This stigma affects how workers are treated and how they see themselves. It reinforces the notion that their work is less valuable, making it harder to demand fair wages or better conditions. Children of informal workers often internalize this stigma, affecting their educational aspirations and perpetuating intergenerational poverty.

The invisible burden: balancing work and home 🔗

Women in the informal sector face what researchers call the “double burden”-they must balance paid work with unpaid domestic responsibilities. Unlike men who can focus primarily on earning, women remain responsible for cooking, childcare, and household management regardless of how many hours they work outside the home. This means working days that stretch to 14 or 16 hours when both paid and unpaid work are counted.

Strategies for organizing and empowering women workers 🔗

Despite these formidable challenges, women workers and their allies have developed various strategies to organize, advocate for rights, and create support systems. These efforts demonstrate resilience and the power of collective action.

The union model: SEWA’s pioneering approach 🔗

The most celebrated example of organizing informal women workers is the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). Founded by Ela Bhatt in 1972, SEWA now has 3.2 million members across 18 Indian states, making it India’s largest trade union for women in the informal economy. SEWA’s approach combines trade union principles with cooperative development and social empowerment.

SEWA organizes women across occupations-street vendors, home-based workers, construction workers, waste pickers, and agricultural laborers. It provides not just collective bargaining power but also access to credit through SEWA Bank, skills training, childcare services, and health insurance. The organization helps women form cooperatives where they can collectively negotiate better terms with employers and middlemen.

What makes SEWA unique is its holistic approach. It recognizes that economic empowerment alone isn’t enough-women also need social security, political voice, and changes in social attitudes. SEWA has successfully lobbied for policy changes and helped establish welfare boards for informal workers in several states.

Building collective strength through local organizations 🔗

Beyond SEWA, numerous local organizations and movements work to organize specific groups of workers. The National Domestic Workers Movement, for instance, operates across 16 states, organizing domestic workers to demand written contracts, minimum wages, and legal protections. These grassroots organizations provide safe spaces where women can share experiences, learn about their rights, and build solidarity.

Worker collectives use various tactics: organizing dharnas (sit-in protests) to demand unpaid wages, conducting awareness campaigns about labor rights, and approaching local authorities to address specific grievances. This collective strength reduces individual vulnerability-when workers stand together, employers and contractors find it harder to exploit or dismiss them arbitrarily.

Legal reforms and policy advocacy 🔗

Organizing efforts have pushed for important legal and policy changes. Several states have established Domestic Workers Welfare Boards that provide social security benefits like health insurance and pension schemes. The e-SHRAM portal, launched in 2021, has registered over 28 million domestic and household workers, creating a database that enables government welfare schemes to reach informal workers.

Worker organizations advocate for comprehensive legislation specifically protecting informal workers. They push for recognition of domestic work as formal employment, implementation of minimum wage laws, and enforcement of existing protections like the Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act. Recent Supreme Court directives have urged the government to create legal frameworks protecting domestic workers, showing that advocacy is beginning to yield results.

Skills training and economic alternatives 🔗

Empowerment also involves creating better economic opportunities. Various organizations provide skills training to help women transition to better-paying work or start their own enterprises. Programs teaching tailoring, beauty services, computer literacy, or entrepreneurship skills give women alternatives to exploitative informal employment.

Microfinance and self-help groups play crucial roles in this strategy. When women have access to small loans without the burden of usurious interest rates, they can invest in tools, equipment, or inventory for small businesses. Self-help groups also provide social support networks and collective bargaining power in dealings with banks and government programs.

Awareness and education initiatives 🔗

Many women in the informal sector are unaware of whatever legal protections do exist or how to access government welfare schemes. Awareness campaigns educate workers about their rights-minimum wages they’re entitled to, how to register for social security, and where to report harassment or exploitation.

Education programs for workers’ children are equally important. Breaking the cycle of poverty requires ensuring the next generation has opportunities beyond informal labor. Some worker organizations run schools or provide scholarships, recognizing that long-term change requires investing in education alongside immediate economic needs.

Building bridges with formal economy and employers 🔗

Progressive organizations are also working with employers to improve conditions. For domestic workers, this means educating households about fair wages, written contracts, and decent treatment. Some initiatives create employment exchanges that match workers with employers while ensuring basic protections. In construction, advocacy focuses on ensuring welfare board benefits reach workers and pressuring contractors to provide basic facilities.

The goal is normalizing the idea that informal workers deserve the same respect and protections as formal sector employees-that the nature of employment shouldn’t determine whether someone receives dignity and fair treatment.

The road ahead: from struggle to dignity 🔗

The journey toward empowering women in India’s unorganized sector is far from complete. While organizations like SEWA demonstrate what’s possible, they reach only a fraction of the millions of women who need support. Systemic change requires sustained effort on multiple fronts: stronger legal protections with genuine enforcement mechanisms, expanded social security coverage, cultural shifts in how we value informal work, and most importantly, supporting women workers to organize and advocate for themselves.

The COVID-19 pandemic starkly revealed how vulnerable informal workers are when crises strike. Millions lost their livelihoods overnight with no safety nets. This should serve as a wake-up call-we cannot build an equitable society while ignoring the needs of workers who form the backbone of our economy. Women who clean our homes, construct our buildings, and produce our goods deserve recognition, protection, and dignity.

Change is possible. When women workers organize collectively, when civil society amplifies their voices, and when policymakers finally prioritize their welfare, real transformation can happen. The question isn’t whether we can improve conditions for women in the unorganized sector-it’s whether we have the political will to do so.

What do you think? How can society better recognize and value the contributions of women working in India’s informal economy? What role should employers, government, and citizens play in ensuring dignity and fair treatment for domestic workers, construction laborers, and other informal workers in your community?

References

1. https://www.investindia.gov.in/siru/gender-dimensions-unorganized-sector-accounting-women-e-shram-portal
2. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-editorials/empowering-domestic-workers-in-india
3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340647203_WOMEN_WORKERS_IN_UNORGANIZED_SECTOR_IN_INDIA_PROBLEMS_AND_PROSPECTSABSTRACT
4. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-19-0460-8_8
5. https://untf.unwomen.org/en/stories/news/2023/05/making-workplaces-safer-for-women-domestic-workers-in-india
6. https://www.sewa.org/