Women’s labour is pivotal in stabilising households amid economic and ecological volatility; however, this contribution is often overlooked in development metrics
THE narrative surrounding India’s development is frequently articulated through the lens of economic growth, productivity, and urban transformation. However, underlying this narrative is an overlooked economic foundation: the unpaid and undercompensated labour of women. Muslim women hold a distinct position influenced by the intersections of gender, minority status, ecological stress, and informal employment. Their labour is vital to several critical sectors in India, such as bidi production, textiles, garments, artisanal manufacturing, food processing, and urban services.
However, their contributions are often underrepresented in policy frameworks and economic accounting. This article posits that India’s patterns of development have systematically offloaded ecological, financial, and caregiving responsibilities onto Muslim women, effectively turning their labour into an unrecognised subsidy that underpins economic growth.
Until the late 20th century, the lives of women in various regions of India were significantly influenced by relatively stable ecological and social systems. Access to land, water, forests, and seasonal cycles established a standard material foundation essential to household survival. Women have historically played a crucial role in agriculture, animal care, food processing, seed preservation, and domestic ecology, contributing significantly to the fabric of community life. While the arrangement of labour has often been unequal, it has fostered a delicate balance in which ecological systems were integral to daily sustenance practices. However, this balance has been challenged by agrarian distress, the enclosure of commons, and economic liberalisation, which have eroded ecological supports and rapidly expanded informal labour markets. As land ownership has shifted toward commodification and water scarcity has become more pronounced, the burden of unpaid labour for women has increased.
The trend of male migration for wage work has further placed the responsibility for household survival primarily on women’s shoulders. At the same time, economic fluctuations have positioned women’s labour as a critical buffer against financial shocks. For Muslim women, who have traditionally faced barriers to land ownership, formal employment, access to credit, and state services, these changes have had particularly profound effects. This situation often leads them toward low-asset, home-based work, in which the demands of paid labour, caregiving, and ecological management converge into an ongoing workload. Consequently, the progress achieved in development has not necessarily translated into reduced inequality; rather, it has highlighted the increased challenges faced by women.
Informal Production Landscape
This transformation is visible across India’s informal production landscape. In northern India, including Meerut, Moradabad, Rampur, Saharanpur, and Varanasi, Muslim women continue to engage in stitching garments, embroidery, bidi rolling, silk weaving, zari finishing, and packaging. Much of this labour is carried out within homes, allowing women to combine income generation with unpaid domestic and ecological responsibilities such as water collection, fuel management, sanitation, and subsistence work. The house becomes a site of production, care, and environmental management, rendering women’s labour invisible to labour statistics and beyond the reach of legal protection.
In eastern India, particularly in Murshidabad, Malda, and North 24 Parganas, Muslim women constitute the backbone of the bidi industry. Bidi rolling is labour-intensive, poorly paid, and associated with serious occupational health risks, including respiratory illness, musculoskeletal disorders, and chronic fatigue. Yet for women constrained to home-based work, it remains one of the few available income sources. In Kolkata, particularly in Khidderpore and Tikiapara, Muslim women predominate in ready-made garment stitching, tailoring, packing, and finishing, working in dense production zones characterised by inadequate infrastructure, flooding, water scarcity, unsafe housing, and environmental degradation. In these neighbourhoods, urbanisation intensifies women’s burdens rather than alleviating them.
In the state of Bihar, districts such as Kishanganj, Araria, Purnia, and Katihar illustrate the complex interplay among rural poverty, migration, and women’s labour. These areas, characterised by significant Muslim populations, face persistent under-investment in essential services, including health, sanitation, education, and women’s support services. Muslim women in these regions participate in bidi rolling, agricultural labour, food processing, and informal household enterprises. They also bear the increased burdens resulting from seasonal male migration, which escalates their unpaid workload and consolidates their responsibility for both income generation and caregiving.
Women’s labour is pivotal in stabilising households amid economic and ecological volatility; however, this contribution is often overlooked in development metrics. In western India, particularly in Gujarat’s Surat, Muslim women form a critical backbone of the textile and garment sector, operating as home-based stitchers, zari artisans, and finishers supplying to major fabric markets. Despite their essential contributions to one of India’s most lucrative industrial segments, they frequently lack access to labour protections and face hazardous working conditions, including exposure to pollution, overcrowding, and fire risks.
Similar dynamics are observed in urban centres such as Mumbai, Bhiwandi, and Malegaon in Maharashtra, where Muslim women participate in diverse economic activities, including power-loom operation, tailoring, waste recycling, and domestic services. These workers are often situated in densely populated areas, characterised by inadequate infrastructure that limits access to clean water, healthcare services, and secure housing. This systemic neglect highlights the urgent need for policy interventions that recognise and address the labour and living conditions of these women within the broader economic framework.
Migration and Muslim Women
Migration, often portrayed as a pathway to empowerment, has not alleviated the burdens faced by Muslim women. Instead, it has transformed ecological labour into new forms within urban environments. Women who previously managed water and fuel resources in rural areas now find themselves queuing for limited water supplies in informal settlements, coping with flooding and heat stress, and reorganising their households within insecure housing. Urban homes have become workplaces, extending workdays without the benefits typically associated with such labour. While paid employment has increased, economic autonomy has not followed suit. The promise of empowerment through market participation largely remains unfulfilled.
Muslim women play a crucial role in economic life; however, their labour often remains overlooked in policy discussions. These women exhibit some of the lowest national workforce participation rates, with a significant portion of their employment occurring in informal and home-based sectors. Current development strategies tend to focus on improving productivity, enhancing skills, building infrastructure, and driving economic growth, but they frequently neglect important factors such as women’s time, health, and the unpaid labour they contribute.
While output metrics are often emphasised, the challenges and exhaustion many women experience can sometimes be overlooked. Conversations about inclusion frequently miss the opportunity to address the redistribution of risks, and it is important to recognise that resilience is often built on the unpaid adaptive work carried out by women. In policy discussions, Muslim women are frequently categorised within the larger group of women or as part of minority communities, which may obscure their roles as economic actors who face unique intersections of gender, ecological, informal, and spatial exclusion.
This fragmented viewpoint can lead to the development of skills without adequate resource provision, employment that does not provide adequate protection, and economic growth that does not take care responsibilities into account, ultimately reinforcing existing structural inequalities.
Feminist Perspective
An eco-economic feminist perspective highlights the fragmentation of policy as a critical failure. It questions the assumption that mere market participation leads to empowerment, urging a closer examination of market structures, the labour that sustains them, and the unseen costs associated with them. Economic exclusion and ecological marginalisation are interlinked processes that mutually reinforce one another. Consequently, Muslim women emerge as an unpaid socio-ecological backbone, shouldering the hidden costs of industrialisation through increased domestic labour, declining health, and lost economic opportunities.
For development to be sustainable, it must address the very costs that are currently borne by women—unpaid labour, compromised health, and silenced voices. A meaningful response necessitates the recognition of ecological and care labour as vital economic contributions; the formalisation and protection of home-based work; the securing of tenure and documentation in areas with significant minority populations; investments in infrastructure and occupational health within production clusters; and the inclusion of women in economic and ecological governance.
Muslim women engaged in bidi rolling, textile finishing, and home-based urban industries are not marginal to India’s economy; rather, they are central to it. Their exhaustion is not an inevitability; it is a result of systemic conditions. Thus, reclaiming ecology as a source of empowerment, rather than a burden, is not an act of nostalgia but an ethical and political necessity for a future that aspires to be just, inclusive, and genuinely developed.
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Dr Shabistan Gaffar is Chairperson of All India Confederation for Women’s Empowerment and ex-chairperson of the women’s cell of National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI). She can be reached at shabistangaffar@gmail.com
