Globalisation is causing shrinking of the organized sector accompanied by the expansion of informal sector. Informal sector is a vast sector where there is preponderance of women. This sector is highly insecure and temporary in nature. The activities that women perform in this sector are quite un-motivating in terms of wages and job satisfaction. Women are generally found in low-income activity that barely guarantees survival. This is likely to be in self-employment or in casual and seasonal paid labour, with low productivity, long hours and little opportunity for upward mobility or for acquiring or improving skills. Their employment in this sector has not helped them to gain economically and raise their subordinate status in the society.
The present descriptive-cum-diagnostic study mainly focuses on the socio-economic life of the informal women workers in the Aligarh city. It highlights the type of work they do, their living, working and economic conditions, the problems faced by them at home, at place of work and their health problems; it highlights the intra-city differentials in the living, working and health conditions of informal women workers and the vulnerability of informal women workers.
Much that has been granted to women by law is yet to be within the reach of them all in reality. Continual large-scale effort is needed to liquidate the limitations still suffered by women to work shoulder to shoulder for improving the standard of living of Indian masses so that opportunities for living a richer and fuller life would be available to both women and men.
The empowerment of women is an end in itself, because it is a question of basic human right. It is also a means to an end: the transformation of social structures so that they serve the needs of people rather than ignoring, suppressing and distorting them.
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