Corrected Newsletter: Women and Work- Ripples Reshaping Realities in April 2026
News, research and data about women and work - curated by our team
Hello, and welcome to CEDA’s newsletter ‘Women & Work’!
April marks the start of a new financial year, a moment of resets, projections, and policy priorities. But as budgets are redrawn, the realities shaping women’s work remain largely unchanged. At Women and Work, we look beyond the numbers to what they miss: the systems, constraints, and everyday trade-offs that continue to define women’s economic lives. Because what matters is not just what gets allocated, but who it actually works for.
Before we get started, a request: We are curating ‘Women & Work’ with the hope that it can provoke, stimulate and amplify conversations about women’s participation in paid work in India. If you like this edition, please do share it on your social media, and with your friends, family and colleagues. Thank you.
In case you would like to read any of our past editions, they are available here.
🗞️ In The News
The debate around women’s reservation has resurfaced, even though the provision was enacted through the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023. The current discussion is less about the principle of 33% reservation and more about its implementation, which remains tied to delimitation and updated census data. As proposals on seat expansion and boundary redrawing emerge alongside it, the issue has evolved into a broader conversation about representation, timing, and the redistribution of political weight across states. Read more here.
Trigger warning: Sexual violence. A months-long investigation by CNN has uncovered what experts describe as an ‘online rape academy’: a global network of online groups where men share methods to drug and sexually assault women, most often their own partners, while evading detection through anonymity. The reporting documents how these spaces function as communities that normalise and even monetise abuse. The scale and organisation of this ecosystem are deeply appalling, pointing to urgent gaps in platform accountability and legal enforcement.
It’s been a week of protests, but the voices of women in India’s gig economy have barely been heard. Alongside factory unrest in Noida, women working through Urban Company took to the streets, not just for higher pay but for basics like 8-hour shifts, weekly rest, and access to water and toilets. Their demands challenge the promise of ‘flexible’ gig work, revealing a gap between rapid platform growth and the everyday realities of women’s labour, where participation is rising, but dignity and security remain uncertain. Read more here.
💡 Research Spotlight
🌡️ The heat is rising—and so are the costs for women.
What does a working day look like when heat determines whether you can work at all? In Bangkok, that question is no longer theoretical. A 2025 brief by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WEIGO) shows that extreme heat is not just a health risk for women in informal work, it is reshaping how, when, and how much they can work.
Drawing on a post-heatwave survey of 1,062 informal workers, including 561 home-based workers (84% women) and 501 street vendors (70% women), alongside focus groups and interviews, the study captures a more complex story than simple ‘loss of hours.’ It reveals how heat interacts with work structure, care responsibilities, and infrastructure to produce uneven and compounding effects for women.
Findings:
⏳Working time is shrinking: About 81% of home-based workers and 78% of vendors have reduced their hours, but for different reasons. Home-based workers lose 2-3 hours a day as heat slows production and damages materials. Vendors, on the other hand, face falling demand, with 80% reporting fewer customers during peak heat. The result converges to a 20-30% decline in incomes, driven by lower productivity at home and reduced sales on the streets.
🏠Indoor vs 🌤️ outdoor work creates distinct risks: For home-based workers, productivity drops by 40-50% as heat builds up indoors, especially in poorly ventilated homes, with 14% having little or no airflow. Street vendors, in contrast, face direct exposure, where extreme temperatures lead to higher spoilage, up to 16%, particularly in perishable food sales.
🏥Health impacts are frequent and economically consequential: 80% of home-based workers and 73% of vendors report heat-related illness, with 67% and 53% respectively needing medical care. This translates into 1-3 lost workdays each month, cutting into already low earnings. Alongside this, nearly 90% report mental strain, reflecting the cumulative pressure of fatigue, falling incomes, and persistent uncertainty.
👩👧Care responsibilities rise as work capacity falls: As heat-related illness spreads, affecting 70-80% of households, caregiving needs rise sharply. 77% of home-based workers and 66% of vendors report taking on more care work, even as their working hours shrink. Women are not substituting paid work with care, but juggling more of both at once. The result is time compression: less time to earn, more time required at home, and little room to adjust either.
💸Costs increase even as earnings decline: Rising heat is pushing women into a tightening financial squeeze. 88-95% report higher spending on cooling, water, electricity, and work inputs, even as incomes fall. To cope, 66-78% are borrowing money, often from informal lenders, while some face income losses of up to 75%. The result is a compounding cycle where falling earnings and rising costs drive increasing debt.
🏗️ Basic infrastructure determines the scale of impact: The impact of heat is shaped as much by infrastructure as by temperature. Lack of ventilation, shade, and access to water directly increases hour loss, illness, and damage to goods, while only 43-44% receive timely heat alerts, limiting their ability to adjust work.
Heat is reshaping women’s work in structurally different ways, which means responses must be targeted. Without redesigning infrastructure, social protection, and care systems, losses will continue to be absorbed privately by women.
📊 Datapoint
Data from the NFHS-5, visualised on CEDA’s Socio-Economic Data Portal (SEDP), shows that just 6 in 10 women can read a text message- a stark figure that reveals how exclusion persists even in the most everyday forms of communication. As work, payments, and public services increasingly move to mobile platforms, the ability to read a message becomes a gateway to economic participation. For many women, that gateway remains only partially open. This is not simply about digital access, but about layered inequalities in literacy, autonomy, and opportunity that cut across sectors and religious groups. When a woman cannot read a message, she risks missing a job alert, a wage payment, or vital information about government support. In that sense, digital inclusion is not just a question of technology- it is a question of who can see, respond, and fully participate in the economy.
The SEDP portal provides a powerful tool for exploring and analyzing socio-economic data at the state and district-level across a range of sectors including health, education, and employment. Use SEDP to uncover critical socio-economic trends and drive informed decisions in research, policy, and advocacy. Explore here.
⏳ Throwback
🧤The invisible design flaw on the frontlines
At the peak of COVID-19, PPE kits became the frontline uniform: gowns, masks, gloves, goggles, coveralls. They signalled safety, control, and preparedness. But beneath that image was a quieter problem: for many women, the protective gear didn’t fit.
Globally, women made up 70-80% of healthcare workers, yet most PPE was designed around male body proportions. The result was a system that looked universal but functioned unevenly. Women reported four times higher rates of ill-fitting gowns and twice as many oversized masks compared to men. This wasn’t just discomfort; it altered how safely women could do their jobs. Loose PPE made tasks like intubation harder, reduced dexterity, and increased the risk of contamination during removal. Goggles fogged up, masks required constant adjustment, and makeshift fixes like taping led to bruising and skin damage. Then came the realities PPE design rarely accounted for. Long shifts in sealed coveralls meant no easy access to toilets. Many women avoided drinking water to reduce breaks. Menstruating workers often had to wear the same pad for hours because removing PPE meant discarding it altogether, leading to rashes, infections, and stress. Pregnant and menopausal women faced faster overheating in non-breathable suits, increasing risks of dehydration and fainting.
The issue ran deeper than sizing. So-called ‘unisex’ PPE was effectively built on a default male (European) body, ignoring differences in body shape, facial structure, and physiological needs. Even before the pandemic, warnings existed. Surveys in the UK showed that only 29% of women had access to PPE designed for them. But when the crisis hit, urgency prioritized scale over fit. What this moment revealed is something larger than PPE. It exposed how design defaults shape safety. When systems assume one kind of body, everyone else adapts- often at a cost.
Looking back, PPE shortages dominated headlines. But PPE fit tells a different story. One where women showed up in overwhelming numbers to protect others, while using equipment that did not fully protect them.
Because ‘one-size-fits-all’ rarely does.
📽️ Lights, Camera, Hustle: Women’s Work Lives in Movies
This fictional CV is a creative work inspired by the character Sayeeda Begum from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), with all names and references respectfully credited to the film’s original creators and rights holders.
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Curated by: Sneha Mariam Thomas for the Centre for Economic Data & Analysis (CEDA), Ashoka University. Cover illustration: Nithya Subramanian