ABSTRACT
Chronic exploitation, marginalisation and poverty are widely reported in the literature as fundamental to the work-life experience of the majority of informal workers. In this chapter I develop a specifi c account of the economic and cultural forces that frame the socio-economic status of women working in the Gujarati informal economy. Worker’s testimonies about their work-life experience provide an opportunity to explore in detail the prevailing social relations of production and reproduction and their impact on worker productivity. This analysis highlights the complexity and dynamism of the dominant forms of economic and cultural constraint experienced by informal women workers.
