Women in the Indian Informal Economy: Collective Strategies for Work Life Improvement and Development

Abstract

Strategies for work life reform amongs informal sector workers in developing countries are currently dominated by resource-based approaches such as the micro-credit movement. This policy framework is predicated upon certain liberal assumptions about individual human action and the relationship between human behaviour and economic development. This article contends that these assumptions are inappropriate when applied to informal sector workers and their economic activities. A focus on the intersubjective conditions of work and economic development, based on the work of Axel Honneth (1995), provides an alternative way of conceptualising the work life experience of marginalised workers and appropriate interventions for economic and social security. An example of a collective strategy implemented by the Self Employed Womens' Association (SEWA) in India, demonstrates the important role that interpersonal recognition plays in activating worker identity and agency to achieve development. The success of SEWA's methodology has implications for how we think about the meaning of development and work life reform in poor countries, suggesting that interventions for economic and social security must engage workers at both the economic and cultural levels at which insecurity, moral injury and social exclusion are produced.

Gender and informal livelihoods

“…In other words, it can promote workers' better understanding of how claim-making cannot be disassociated from economic, social and political injustices. As a symbolic and intangible asset, collective action fosters a stronger worker identity and self-dignity (Hill, 2001) that activates voice and agency.…”

Gender matters in the global outsourcing of service work

“…Consequently, the absence of appropriate and systematic data collection further enhances the invisibility of women's work (Standing, 1999;Benería, 2003) and perpetuates the assumption that informal sector employment contributes little to global or national economies. Yet examples from around the world suggest otherwise: 91% of the Indian labour force is said to be working outside the formally organised economy which employs only 4% of India's working women (Hill, 2001), while as many as 83% of new jobs in Latin America and 93% in Africa are informal (Elson, 2002). In many parts of the developing world employment in the informal sector has either been stable or has grown during the 1980s (Wield and Chataway, 2000), with East Asia being the only region to experience growth in formal sector employment (Mehra and Gammage, 1999).…”

The ‘New’ Migration for Work Phenomenon: The Pursuit of Emancipation and Recognition in the Context of Work

“…Finally, social policy interventions for managing migration flows should engage workers at economic and socio-political and psychological levels in order to capture workers' challenges, such as moral injury and social exclusion, experienced due to the deterioration of human and social rights at work (Hill, 2001). Often, migrant workers' lived experiences are not consulted when crafting organisational design, diversity and inclusion policies and strategies, and trade union activities.…”