Four dancers have been booked and 21 have been virtually banned over accusations of ‘obscenity’. Despite court rulings, obscenity laws continue to police women’s bodies

Does the entrenched notion of masculine solidarity in the military create room for misogynistic behaviour? In view of a recent case, we look at how these attitudes impact the effective application of sexual harassment laws

The findings in the latest labour force survey indicate that the rising aspirations of educated rural women are not matched by opportunities in non-agricultural work

Long distances to medical facilities, shortage of women doctors and frustrating bureaucratic hurdles discourage women workers in the garment sector from accessing the Employees’ State Insurance Scheme

A polythene bag clasped over their head is all the protection many domestic workers and women vendors have against heavy coastal monsoons

With the state indifferent to their demands for better wages and their workload heavier by one more scheme, Anganwadi workers in Maharashtra are protesting again. But their resistance tactics have changed

Rs 4 to feather a dozen shuttlecocks, Rs 35 to stitch a football, Rs 62 to tack together six panels of a rugby ball – that is what home-based women workers are paid to keep the booming sports good industry of the city in business.

Gender based violence, caste discrimination and forced labour practices are rife in Indian garment factories. In Tamil Nadu, Theivanai Maruthai, a young Dalit woman trade union leader is trying to change this

Indian beauticians occupy a cultural niche in the beauty salons of Paris. This provides vulnerable migrant women an entry into a labour market that is otherwise inhospitable to them

The delivery deadlines of fashion brands and suppliers make no allowance for women who are forced to work in peak summer with poor access to water, sanitation and healthcare

A single mother of two, this e-rickshaw driver in Tinsukia says life is a daily struggle to balance earnings and expense

The catchy title apart, the Lakhpati Didi initiative has not really been able to increase income generation among beneficiaries

Odisha’s scheme to increase workdays under MGNREGA has run into systemic challenges, resulting in poor uptake, especially of women workers

The only way to fob off matrimony and find independence is to ensure that you land a government job, say young women at a Rohtak campus

Job insecurity, random transfers, non-payment of wages, and lack of benefits are hurting contractual teachers, of whom 55% are women

From women belonging to nomadic tribes to cane-cutters, small social and workers’ groups are presenting their charter of demands to politicians and parties contesting the ongoing elections

When politicians promise to pay for care work they are putting a value on unpaid labour but they also end up reinforcing social norms about ‘women’s work’

In 15 of the 86 constituencies where the general elections will be held tomorrow, more than 30% of voters are impacted by the Forest Rights Act. We look at how the loss of forests impacts the lives and livelihoods of Adivasi women

The taps and pipelines meant to carry water to the homes of hill-dwelling communities of the state have either not been installed or have no water supply. Women trudge miles and undertake risks to collect water

Whether it is putting off an urgent surgery or making do with 250 gm of fish for her family of four once a month, Lakhya Hira Phukon, like most other poorly-paid ASHA workers, has to balance her domestic budget with extreme care

In a London beauty salon run by women from the subcontinent, links between caste, food and odour echo the arguments in the debate in India over a ‘pure vegetarian’ delivery fleet

Our investigation across eight villages showed just one project available under MGNREGS, forcing women to migrate as far as Odisha in search of work

Initiatives to make the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana more effective has not quite worked out the way it should, we find

In Delhi, evictions get you resettlement housing but in areas with little access to job, services or essential facilities. And it is the women who struggle the most with travel and livelihood options

Striking sanitation workers in Delhi’s Burari Hospital have accused private hiring companies of corrupt practices and sexual harassment

Linking economic welfare schemes for women to their family size will further limit women’s participation in work and increase their vulnerabilities, argue experts

The relentless cycle of field and paperwork is affecting their mental health, leaving them prone to errors

Faced with termination and loss of salary, striking Anganwadi workers in the state are living in fear and anxiety

There is state pressure to dissuade frontline health workers from fighting for political office even though they are still hired as ‘honorary volunteers’

India has approximately 5.2 million domestic workers according to government data. However, the National Domestic Workers’ Movement (NDWM) estimates the total number in India from anywhere […]

Anganwadi workers says their role has gone from deliverers of schemes to being data collectors for the government

A unique sports event gives women from poor homes the chance to defy gender norms and find sisterhood in play

Rural women have few work options in the state and poverty does not allow them to study either

On World Toilet Day, here are the stories of two women who struggle to keep sanitation complexes in the slums of Mumbai clean and safe

After a 73-day protest, Haryana’s ASHA workers were able to negotiate for themselves a Rs 2100 hike in their honorarium. This surpasses what is paid by Kerala, the state that pays ASHA workers the highest amount. But the Haryana ASHA workers union is determined to continue the movement for those working in other states too.

Despite the enervating humidity of the mid-October night in Mumbai, Bhimabai Zunjure, 40, is deftly working a mound of mango leaves into neat bunches. She sits on the bridge leading to the Dadar flower market, and looks up from her work to only sell the leaves which are in high demand for the ongoing Navratri rituals.

The frontline health workers have called for a 24-hour strike outside district offices and homes of political leaders

Culture is a powerful medium to collectivise and empower the working class, says the veteran union leader

Key Highlights Firms with a larger number of total employees had a higher proportion of female workers  For every 1 percent additional workers firms hire, the […]

In January 2021, when Jayasre Kathiravel, a 20-year old employee of a garment factory in Tamil Nadu’s Dindigul district was sexually assaulted and murdered by the […]

In the bastis of east Mumbai, trade union leader Sangeeta Kamble is an ally and friend of the

Parlours are small pockets of rebellion and assertion where girls and young women find solidarity in small towns and villages

Karnataka’s Factories Act amendments raise concerns about worker welfare, women’s rights, and need for international standard compliance

In July, a woman rag picker died as her foot caught in a waste truck during a desperate scramble to find valuable scrap. Her story reveals the highly hazardous conditions in which waste pickers work for a pittance

The number of women commuters has doubled but with no funds, public bus networks are stretched, leading to overcrowding and disrupted schedules

What are the peculiarities of sleep and rest in the life of a female street vendor who works in a market that opens before dawn? Can alternate ideas of urban planning help reimagine her life, ease her anxieties? We return to Delhi’s Raghubir Nagar for answers

Violent evictions from streets, abuse and brutality are routine for street vendors. A law to protect their rights suffers from flawed implementation

In this, the third in the series ‘Placing Work, Mapping Places’, we explore the many reasons why Raghubir Nagar’s women hawkers associate leisure with the safety of places of worship

A craft brought by the missionaries changed the lives of Dalit women in multiple ways before it became the domain of a dominant caste

In this, the second in the series ‘Placing Work, Mapping Places’, we detail the struggles of Raghubir Nagar’s pheriwalis in dealing with street and State violence. We ask them to reimagine their workspaces as safer, gender-friendly and more productive.

After recording some improvement in recent years, the growth in female labour force participation rate in India now seems to be stagnating. Among the women who work, the share of those who are self-employed has been increasing in recent years, even as their average earnings, already low, have dwindled further.

As a young PhD student just embarking on research, I was very certain that I wanted to contribute to the field of education economics. After completing […]

In India’s cheapest second-hand clothes market, women have to reclaim public spaces to assert their right to livelihood constantly

Of the millions of workers who worked in India’s factories in 2019-20, less than a fifth were women. This share has remained largely unchanged for over two decades

A 51.7% rise in the price of LPG refills between January 2021 and July 2022 has forced women from low-incomes homes to minimise the use of gas stoves

There are rising tensions between the aspirations of thousands of workers and the work structure of the gig economy

The job is too ‘dangerous’, ‘dirty’ for women, say male-dominated newsrooms

“What is this Udyam Registration Certificate? Why do I need the certificate?” Kalpanaben*, who runs a saree business out of her house in Delhi, is bewildered. […]

In 2021, a qualitative study was carried out on women’s career progression, access to healthcare and grievance redressal mechanisms across the textile and apparel industry. It […]

India’s law on sexual harassment at work has failed to account for the experiences of informal sector working women, most of who are from marginalised communities […]

As August rains swept Delhi, more than 500 workers, mostly women, gathered around the Jantar Mantar monument to protest delayed wages, reduced workdays and digital glitches […]

‘Mobile Girls Koottam: Working Women Speak’, released in 2021, documents the real-life conversations between gender and labour rights scholar Madhumita Dutta,  radio podcaster Samyuktha PC and […]

Sugarcane cutting is relentless, backbreaking work, say the migrant women workers of Kothi village in Kaij taluka of Maharashtra’s Beed district. You have to hack at […]

Inclusive financial networks such as credit cooperatives are more effective than traditional financial institutions in relieving the financial distress of women whose lives and livelihoods are […]

The recent Supreme Court directives on guaranteeing sex workers dignity and constitutional freedoms still leaves some critical problem areas unaddressed and these can only be resolved […]

The recent industrial fire at an electronic assembly unit of Cofe Impex Pvt Ltd in west Delhi’s Mundka village has exposed the social and economic precarity […]

Leela had been a binding assistant at the Kerala Books and Publications Society, a state-owned textbook publishing house, for 19 years when she was overlooked for […]

After a year-long campaign by a Dalit women’s union in Tamil Nadu, the multinational fast-fashion brand H&M and its Tamil Nadu-based supplier, Eastman Exports Global Clothing […]

It took nearly a year for Virginia* and her husband to bring home the four siblings they had asked to adopt. The children were aged between […]

Delhi’s anganwadi workers (AWW) and helpers (AWH), who ended their 38-day strike on March 9, will move court against the state government order terminating the services […]

A sea of red flags rises up along Flagstaff Road in north Delhi’s Civil Lines area, just a few metres from the home of chief minister […]

It is a wintery February morning and a dense fog has descended over Palia, a town 100 km from Lakhimpur town in northern Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur […]

Usha Sahu, 45, a Mitanin trainer from Bemetara district in central Chhattisgarh was in for a  shock when she checked her bank account in October. The […]

On May 14, 2021, while encouraging farmers to take up organic farming as he released the 8th instalment of the Pradhan Mantri- Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), […]

Lassu Ben, 38, is an outspoken and resolute woman but even she sometimes hesitates to trade with the men at the local farm market. ‘Bahas mat […]

Khalida Akhter (36), an ASHA worker from Sheeri village in Baramulla district in North Kashmir, died of Covid-19  in May this year.  An Accredited Social Health Activist […]

As Karnataka begins to ease state-wide restrictions imposed since May 10, 2021 to control the spread of COVID-19 virus, industries have been allowed to function with […]

S. Rathinam (39) had escaped death by a whisker that afternoon.  On February 13, 2021, she, along with hundreds of others, had to run for their […]

On 24 October, 2020, 1300 women garment workers of  Euro Clothing Company– 2 (ECC-2) of a unit of Gokaldas Exports in Srirangapatna, in Mandya district of […]

“I have been rolling beedis since I was fifteen. Our whole community is dependent on the profession. Our employers underpay us, our pension never arrives without […]

“These capitalists will ruin us,” thundered Charanjeet Kaur, a thirty nine year old farmer with a medium landholding of 12 acres (4 hectares) from Wara Bhaika […]

Neeta (name changed), a cane cutter in one of the many sugarcane farms in Beed district of central Maharashtra, was only in her early 30s when […]

On 27 September 2020,  three Farm Bills became law after receiving presidential assent. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill […]

India’s frontline women health workers, or ASHAs, play a critical role in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. But when they demanded better pay, protective gear and fixed […]

For over a month now, over 600 women garment workers have been sitting in protest against the illegal layoffs in the factory premises of the  ECC […]

” We are unable to sell Mahul flowers in the market due to the lockdown. Lockdown has taken our  livelihood away”, said Baijanti Kalo of Bamandagarh […]

Our 16-state survey found that in Kerala, ASHAs, women health workers at the frontlines of India’s resistance to Covid-19, feel empowered and respected. Yet, their demands […]

Minara Begum, 33, has reached breaking point. “If the government of Assam does not release my salary today, my kids will starve,” said the mother of […]

असम की रहने वालीं 33 साल की मीनारा बेगम चार बच्चों की मां हैं. उनका सबसे छोटा बेटा दो साल का है. वह रोते हुए कहती […]

Without them, It would be impossible to track, test and monitor Covid-19 patients across India’s villages and cities. But over a million women health workers must […]

रात के 9 बज रहे हैं. दिनभर की भाग-दौड़ के बाद अब लक्ष्मी सिंह खाने बैठी ही थीं कि सरपंच ने उन्हें बुला लिया.कई दिनों से […]