UPSC Sociology 2026 Paper 1
Model Answer:
The informal economy absorbs the vast majority of female labor globally, reflecting a “feminisation of survival” where women remain disproportionately concentrated in the most precarious, low-yielding, and unregulated economic niches.
Dimensions of Female Labor in the Informal Economy
- Housewifisation and Devaluation: Maria Mies argues that capitalist production frames home-based, subcontracted female labor as supplementary “housework,” naturalising depressed wages, piece-rate systems, and extreme self-exploitation.
- Continuum of Unpaid Care: Informal occupations—such as domestic work and street vending—are structural extensions of unpaid reproductive roles, entrenching gender stereotypes without reconfiguring the domestic division of labor.
- Public Patriarchal Subordination: Aligning with Sylvia Walby’s public patriarchy framework, market informality exposes women to structural exploitation via acute wage discrimination, occupational segregation, and complete absence of maternity or health protection.
- Invisibility and Legal Alienation: Operating beyond the ambit of formal labor legislation, female informal workers lack institutional grievance mechanisms, compounding vulnerability to arbitrary dismissal, debt bondage, and workplace harassment.
- The Platformised Precariat: The rise of gig platforms in domestic and personal care sectors generates a feminised precariat (Guy Standing), trading apparent flexibility for algorithmic surveillance and extreme economic insecurity.
- Subversive Collective Agency: Concurrently, Naila Kabeer notes that informal earnings can enhance intra-household bargaining autonomy; grassroots mobilisations like SEWA successfully transform survivalist work into unionised collective bargaining power.
Women’s informal work paradoxically bridges survival and subjugation, requiring transformative social protection and formal recognition of their economic citizenship.
