Work without security: An analysis of women domestic workers’ conditions, struggles and aspirations

Abstract

This study critically examines the structural and lived realities of migrant women domestic workers in the Delhi–NCR region, situating their experiences within the intersecting frameworks of gender, caste, class, migration, and urban informality. Employing a mixed-methods research design, the study draws on a quantitative survey of 469 women domestic workers across five districts and qualitative data from focus group discussions with 45 participants. The analysis explores trajectories of migration, labour conditions, access to social protection, experiences of discrimination and violence, and practices of agency and collective mobilisation. The findings reveal that migration, rather than facilitating socioeconomic mobility, often entrenches precarity through informal and unregulated employment arrangements, absence of written contracts, wage insecurity, occupational exploitation, and spatial marginalisation. Women workers face systemic exclusion from state welfare mechanisms, compounded by barriers related to documentation, mobility, and information asymmetries. The convergence of paid domestic labour with intensive unpaid care responsibilities results in significant physical, emotional, and temporal burdens, reinforcing gendered hierarchies within both productive and reproductive spheres. Experiences of everyday discrimination, surveillance, and harassment further underscore the deeply unequal power relations characterising domestic work. Simultaneously, the study foregrounds women’s agency, resilience, and political subjectivities, as reflected in their individual and collective strategies of negotiation, resistance, and organising. These practices not only challenge dominant representations of domestic workers as passive victims but also articulate claims for labour rights, social security, legal recognition, and dignity. By centring workers’ voices and lived experiences, the study contributes to feminist and labourscholarship on migration and informality, while offering empirically grounded insights for policy interventions aimed at advancing rightsbased, inclusive, and gender-responsive frameworks for domestic work in urban India.