The Work the Economy Fails to See

This week’s Field Notes challenged a simple assumption: having a job does not always mean having economic security.

Across the world, millions of women work as domestic workers, street vendors, home-based producers, caregivers, and waste pickers. WIEGO estimates that 55% of working women are informally employed. Their labor supports households, communities, and entire economies, yet many remain outside the systems that provide stable income, social protection, or legal recognition.

But informality is not always a free choice. The UNDP's research in Cambodia shows how women's employment decisions can be shaped by caregiving responsibilities and expectations about what women should do. Flexible work may appear empowering, but flexibility means something different when it is necessary because childcare and family responsibilities are not equally shared.

The SEWA experience in India points toward a different possibility. When informal women workers organize through cooperatives, they can move from being individually vulnerable workers to collective decision-makers with greater access to markets, services, and economic power.

Taken together, these stories reveal that the real issue is not whether women participate in the economy. They already do. The question is whether the economy recognizes, protects, and values the work they perform.

This week also pushed me to think differently about what it means to make an overlooked issue visible. Awareness matters, but recognition alone does not change who gets protected or who gets heard. Visibility should be a starting point, one that leads to voice, and ultimately, to power.