“Explain the emerging challenges in establishing gender equality in the informal sector.” (2021)
The informal sector has always disadvantaged women through low wages, invisibility and the absence of protection. The emerging challenges are different in kind. They arise from digitalisation, climate stress and new policies that promise inclusion but often reproduce older inequalities. Guy Standing’s The Precariat (2011) captures the wider trend: insecurity is spreading, and women are at its core.
Emerging challenges
- Platformisation of feminised work: app-based beauty, cleaning and care services bring women into algorithmic management, ratings and deactivation, but not employment status. NITI Aayog (2022) estimated 7.7 million gig workers in 2020-21, rising to 23.5 million by 2029-30. The Code on Social Security now defines gig workers, but benefits depend on schemes rather than an employer’s obligations.
- Digital gender divide: welfare and registration (e-Shram, DBT) are increasingly online. NFHS-5 (2019-21) found only 33% of women had ever used the internet, against 57% of men, so digital inclusion can become a new filter of exclusion.
- Statistical invisibility in a new form: female LFPR rose to 41.7% in PLFS 2023-24 and stood at 40.0% in PLFS 2025. Much of the gain is self-employment and unpaid family help. Headline growth can conceal distress.
- Informalisation inside the formal sector and the state: contract workers in factories, and ASHA and anganwadi workers paid honoraria, show that the state itself relies on under-recognised women’s labour.
- Care crisis: Nancy Fraser (2016) argues that capitalism draws on care work while depleting it. Women carry 289 minutes a day of unpaid domestic work against men’s 88 (Time Use Survey 2024), and little public childcare reaches informal workers.
- Climate and health shocks: extreme heat cuts the earnings of women vendors, construction workers and salt-pan workers. During the 2020 lockdown women lost work faster and returned more slowly.
- Weakening collective voice: home-based and domestic workers are dispersed, and employers cannot easily be identified. SEWA shows what is possible, but union density remains low.
- Intersectional layering: caste, migrant status and religion compound gender. Dalit and Adivasi women dominate the most hazardous work.
The policy paradox
The Labour Codes in force from 21 November 2025 ban gender discrimination in wages and recruitment. Yet enforcement machinery reaches mainly registered establishments, while Local Committees under the POSH Act, 2013 remain weak in districts, so formal rights sit on informal realities.
Conclusion
Gender equality in the informal sector now demands more than extending old labour law. It requires platform accountability, digital access, universal and portable social security, recognition of care, and support for women’s collective organisation. Otherwise flexibility will keep being built on women’s precarity.