This article is authored by Divya Deshmukh, a third year B.A. LL. B (Hon’s) student at the Manikchand Pahade Law College, which is affiliated to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Chh. Sambhajinagar.

Rural India’s economic and social fabric has a strong connection to the handloom sector, one of the countries earliest and most culturally varied industry. It is a constant tradition of native art and craftsmanship as well as a source of income for millions of people.  Since women constitute more than 70% of handloom workers, the industry is vital to the development of rural women artisans.  The business is largely unregulated, informal, and susceptible to exploitation, particularly for women weavers whose labour is frequently underappreciated and unpaid, despite its role of creating jobs and preserving cultural heritage.

Women at the Loom: Unseen Labour, Unspoken Rights

Women make up almost all of the staff in India’s handloom sector, serving as skilled weavers, manufacturers, spinners, and finishers. Since individuals often work out of homes or tiny cooperatives, their work is not included in official statistics or policy frameworks.  Women weavers are rarely recognised as formal workers, despite playing a vital part in maintaining traditional crafts and local economies.  The majority are still not covered by contemporary labour laws’ legal rights, decent salaries, or social security. They face both the burden that they are ignored as women and as artisans because of an amalgam of gender, informality, and socio-economic marginalisation.  To ensure that the rights, voices, and dignity of women weavers are retained in the tangle of exploitation, an inclusive approach to labour law is essential.

Gender Roles in the Loom Industry: The Invisible Workforce

India’s handloom sector, which embodies centuries-old weaving customs, you can regional personal identities and artistic talent, is a living witness to its rich cultural legacy.  Every piece of loom fabric, from Telangana’s colourful Pochampally ikat to Uttar Pradesh’s elaborate Banarasi brocades, narrates a tale of expert craftsmanship that have been passed down through the ages. According to the Handloom Census 2019–20, women make up around 72% of India’s handloom workforce, or 2.55 million out of 3.52 million handloom workers.  Despite its wide presence, they are still mostly invisible in institutional structures: in total, 66% of female weavers work in informal, home-based settings without having recourse to government programs or cooperatives.  Based to the Economic Survey 2024–2025, women compose over 80% of khadi and 56% of handcraft artists; yet, only over 22% of MSMEs are owned by women, and this figure reduces drastically with increasing the size of the company.

Legal Frameworks Governing Handloom Workers

Several central labour laws and legislative codes aim to protect wages, social security, and working conditions especially for those employed in informal settings form the core of India’s legal framework for handloom workers.  First off, in order to ensure equal and prompt payment for every employee, including handloom craftsmen, the Code on Wages, 2019, which is at present partially in effect combines and overrides norms such as the Equal Remuneration Act and the Minimum Wages Act.  When it is notified, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSHWC) Code, 2020 will substitute for earlier occupational safety regulations and offer sector-neutral coverage for topics like workplace safety and working hours. The 2020 Code on Social Security, which provides wage protections to unorganised workers like home-based handloom weavers, modernises and combines policies like the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act and offers pension, disability, maternity, and life insurance benefits.  Practically speaking, handloom companies gain from a variety of multi-tiered welfare initiatives run at the federal and state levels. In this case, eligible weavers between the ages of 18 and 50 are given ₹2 lakh in life or accidental death protection under the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana. These kinds of schemes are funded by a modest shared cash structure. The Mahatma Gandhi Bunkar Bima Yojana, providing death and disability payments up to ₹1.5 lakh for an annual premium of ₹470, supports older craftsmen (51–59 years).  In 2024–2025, the National Handloom Development Programme (NHDP) will provide subsidies for raw materials, scholarships (up to ₹2 lakh annually), and pensions for old age (₹8,000/month to people over 60 with incomes under ₹1 lakh).  State-level programs, like the co-operative savings and pension plans in Tamil Nadu, also offer life insurance and matching investments under the PMJJBY, PMSBY, and MGBBY schemes. 

Feminist Legal Theory and Labour Rights

A fundamental the base for examining the structural disparities present in labour law, especially its inability to take into account the lived reality of women employed in the unorganized and invisible sectors, is provided by feminist legal theory.  Legal systems have historically been created from a male-centric perspective, per foundational theorists like Catharine A. MacKinnon, who maintains that the ideal worker is a man who is formally employed, free from caregiving duties, and working regularly and full-time (MacKinnon, 1989).  The experiences of women, whose labour is frequently fragmented, home-based, unpaid or disregarded and rooted in patriarchal household and social systems, are effectively ignored by this normative assumption.

Feminist legal scholars such as Kamala Sankaran have demonstrated how labour laws in India routinely discriminate against women employed in unorganized industries. Agricultural laborers, domestic workers, bidi rollers, and handloom weavers are among them; many of them do not have official employment contracts or access to legal safeguards (Sankaran, 2007).  Even though laws like the Minimum Wages Act might officially apply to some of these workers, piece-rate payment schemes frequently get around their implementation, which leads to drastically lower earnings. In addition, domestic and home-based workers frequently lack basic rights like maternity benefits, health coverage, and workplace safety since they are excluded from major welfare statutes like the Factories Act and the Employees’ State Insurance Act (ESI Act). The strict divide between “productive” and “reproductive” labor is challenged by feminist legal theory, which demands that labor be reconceived to encompass unpaid and informal labor.  It urges a change from a protective to a revolutionary legal framework that enacts gender-sensitive protections and actively challenges systemic disparities.  The legal definition of “work” would have to be expanded to include caregiving and domestic production, social security payouts would have to be made available to all regardless of formal employment status, and grievance redressal processes would need to be put in place that are both easily accessible and sensitive to the unique vulnerabilities faced by female employees. Feminist theorists also support policies that would allow domestic and home-based workers to engage in collective bargaining, as well as the legal recognition of women’s cooperatives and informal collectives.

The necessity of such reforms is highlighted by empirical testimonies from women employed in India’s informal economy.  Mitali Das, a 35-year-old Sualkuchi weaver in Assam, claims to make less than ₹150 a day while working in over 10 hours at the loom without access to healthcare benefits or maternity leave.  Saraswati, a Dalit craftswoman from Chirala, Andhra Pradesh, describes how her family has been weaving cotton for centuries, but she says she has never received a formal contract or been enrolled in government assistance program.  She claims, “We make fabric, but nobody sees us,” expressing hiding that feminist legal theory seeks to address. The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), based in Gujarat, is a powerful grassroots movement representing over 1.5 million women working in India’s informal economy. These women are engaged in diverse sectors such as handloom weaving, embroidery, bidi-making and street vending. A significant number of them work from home, often juggling domestic responsibilities with artisanal labour like block printing and stitching. Despite their substantial contributions to the textile economy, these women remain largely invisible in policy frameworks. In 2024, during SEWA’s Golden Jubilee celebrations, a group of rural women artisans publicly protested against their exclusion from the Social Security Code. They demanded legal recognition as workers and access to social protections like insurance, maternity benefits, and pensions. A common opinion was expressed by one Patan woman: “We don’t want free schemes.”  Just acknowledge us as employees and provide us with a steady salary.  The urgent need for structural changes that go beyond welfare-based strategies and give unorganized women workers respect, rights, and stable employment is summed up in this statement.

More than 90% of Indian women work in the informal economy, yet the lives behind these numbers are frequently hidden and unrecognized. Rukhsana, a 42-year-old from Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, works for hours every day doing zardozi embroidery in the north. She receives between ₹80 and ₹100, which is far less than the minimum wage, and she has no formal contract or social insurance.  “My hands hurt, my eyes burn, but the money barely feeds my family,” Lakshmi says as she balances weaving saree borders in the evening with beedi-rolling in the morning in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu.  Bina Devi, a silk weaving from Bhagalpur in the eastern state of Bihar, carries on her mother’s profession but regrets the falling salaries and the inability to obtain government loans or cooperatives. Members of a women’s handloom cooperative from Manipur in the northeast were invited to a national expo in 2024, but because of bureaucratic hold-ups, they had to return home unpaid for six months. These tales cover a wide range of Indian culture, but they all have a few things in common: structural exclusion, gendered exploitation, and invisible labour. The unpaid or inadequately compensated labour of millions of women, whose contributions are essential but rarely appreciated, forms the foundation of India’s informal economy. Each woman behind these figures symbolizes a broader reality.  Reforming policies and changing public attitudes are both necessary to acknowledge these workers as contributors to the economy rather than merely recipients of charity.

Feminist legal theory thus gives a normative and useful basis for rethinking labour law in ways that prioritize women’s experiences, confront patriarchal exclusions, and provide an inclusive legal structure rather than simply highlighting pre-existing legal paradigms. By adopting this perspective, the law is transformed from a regulatory instrument to a catalyst for social change that may recognize and honor the entire range of women’s labour.

Policy and Legal Reforms: What Needs to Change?

The statute mostly neglects handloom and informal women workers, despite their tremendous effect on India’s cultural and economic fabric. Current labour laws, such as the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act (2008) and the Minimum Wages Act, frequently fall lacking in their implementation or leave out important worker groups. We can understand how laws frequently disregard or undervalue the responsibilities that women play in society, particularly in the workplace, thanks to feminist legal theory.  It questions the notion that only formal, paid employment qualifies as “real” labour and makes the case that unpaid domestic labor and informal home-based work, which are primarily performed by women, ought to be protected by the law.  By arguing for more expansive definitions of “worker” that encompass women who freelance from home, in the unorganized sector, or in household duties, this idea can direct reforms.  For instance, home-based garment workers or casual weavers might be formally registered and offered access to benefits like maternity leave, health insurance, and pensions. Feminist legal policies may also provide portable entitlements, which would enable women to maintain advantages like savings or health insurance even if they work part-time or change employment.  Better social welfare policies could be shaped by another reform: include unpaid domestic labour in national economic data (such as GDP).  Feminist legal theory contributes to ensuring that women’s work, whether in or out of the home, is viewed, respected, and protected similarly to other employment by acknowledging various types of labour in the law.  This results in legal and labour laws that are more inclusive and gender-just

Registration must be made accessible and mandatory for handloom workers to register through distributed constructions, such as panchayats or local cooperatives. Additionally, through faster enrolment and portable entitlements, social security coverage which includes health insurance, maternity benefits, and pensions should be expanded.  Workplace safety, grievance redressal procedures, and fair pay must all be addressed via gender-sensitive reforms.  The promise of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” would still marginalise those that weave the very fabric of India’s cultural legacy in the absence of such inclusive and applied laws.

Conclusion: Weaving Justice into Every Thread

The grave injustices that influence the lives of women in India’s handloom and informal labour sectors, where their employment is frequently underappreciated, unappreciated, or completely invisible, are illuminated by a feminist legal lens.  This viewpoint confronts the systemic inequalities in contemporary employment laws by emphasising the lived experiences of women, particularly those from under-represented castes and groups.  Without taking note of the gendered nature of labour, the dependence of the informal sector on women, and the structural exclusions they experience, laws cannot be genuinely just.  In the future, India’s legal system has to embrace gender-sensitive, inclusive changes that respect all forms of labour, provide social security, and give women workers’ rights-based, legally binding protections.  Only then will we be able to start infusing equity into every aspect of the national economy.

        

ENDNOTES:

1. Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, Fourth All India Handloom Census 2019–20, New Delhi: Office of the Development Commissioner for Handlooms
2. Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Economic Survey 2024–25, Department of Economic Affairs.
3. Sankaran, Kamala, “Informal Employment and the Law in India: Rights and Responses,” in Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Vol. 52, No. 4, 2009.
4. MacKinnon, Catharine A., Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Harvard University Press, 1989.
5. Government of India, The Code on Wages, 2019, Ministry of Labour and Employment.
6. Government of India, The Code on Social Security, 2020, and The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020.
7. Government of India, Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY), and Mahatma Gandhi Bunkar Bima Yojana (MGBBY).
8. Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, National Handloom Development Programme (NHDP) Annual Report 2024–25.
9. Tamil Nadu Handloom and Textiles Department, Co-operative Savings and Pension Scheme Guidelines, 2024
10. News18 Editorial, “Female Artisans: Unsung Heroes of the Handloom Industry”, June 2024.