7. Micro-Insurance: Implications of Informal Economy on Women

• Although most women stay at home and carry out home-based economic activities, they have little time to give to other household chores out of their daily routine. In other sense, women are overburdened with more work and they are expected to sacrifice their leisure time for carrying out household tasks.
• In women-led home-based economic activities, traditionally, older girls are expected to take up the same work at an early age, thus stopping their schooling and denying them higher education. This leads to low education status of women.
• There is a major impact on the health conditions of women engaged in informal economy. Besides, undertaking work during maternity opens up women to greater risks.
• There are also unhygienic work conditions, which have detrimental effect on women’s health. For example, the process of making incense sticks (in both India and Pakistan) is hazardous in several ways. Saw dust mixed with various colours and toxic chemicals is used to make a paste. The paste, normally handled with bare hands, leads to discolouring and injury to the skin. Workers inhaled the dust and toxins causing irritation in the upper respiratory tract that eventually resulted in asthma in many cases. In none of the cases was any kind of treatment resorted to, despite awareness of the health problem.

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