Gender, work, and informality: women in India’s unorganised sector
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64171/JSRD.3.1.41-45Keywords:
gender, informal sector, women workers, unorganized labour, feminist sociology, IndiaAbstract
Women constitute a substantial proportion of India’s workforce in the unorganized sector, yet their labour remains largely invisible, undervalued, and insecure. Despite their crucial contribution to household survival and national economic activity, women engaged in informal employment continue to face persistent challenges such as low wages, absence of social security, unsafe working conditions, occupational health risks, and limited access to legal protection. This is a conceptual paper where the sociological and social work approaches are used to critically study the issue of women working in the unorganized sector of India. Using the concepts of feminist sociology, the labour market segmentation theory and the theory of social reproduction, the paper will examine the structural forces that influence female involvement in informal labour. It also identifies state policies and labour laws concerning informal employment and shows the persistent divide between the policy agenda and actual conditions of women laborers. In the paper, the author believes that in order to deal with the vulnerability of women in the informal economy, gender sensitive labour policies, proper institutional mechanisms as well as long term community based social work interventions are needed.
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