India home workers demand equal rights 30 years after historic ILO agreement.

As the International Labour Organisation marks thirty years since Convention 177, home-based workers in India urgently seek equal rights. The historic agreement was signed in Geneva on June 20, 1996. It placed domestic producers on the same footing as factory wage earners. New Delhi – Under a scorching sun in a crowded working-class district, Shehnaz Bano stitches leather pieces on her worn floor. The thirty-eight-year-old mother of two teenage boys creates sleeves and panels for jackets. She earns just 100 rupees, roughly one dollar, per piece. "Imagine if I worked those same hours on a factory line," Bano asks. "Would I still get paid so little?" Her answer is no. She works from home but lacks equal pay or legal protections. Bano represents nearly 260 million people globally who produce goods or services within their own residences. These individuals operate in the global informal economy. Their jobs often feature low wages, denied rights, and no social security. They also face undefined work hours and lack paid leave. Nearly 57 percent of this workforce consists of women, according to a 2024 estimate by Women in Informal Employment. The group, based in the United Kingdom, focuses on improving conditions for the working poor. Thirty years ago, a major effort aimed to fix these conditions. Success has remained elusive. The International Labour Organisation, a United Nations body, adopted the landmark convention during a conference in Geneva. It called on member states to implement policies ensuring equality between home-based workers and others. The agreement officially took effect on April 22, 2000. However, only thirteen countries have ratified it to date. None of these ratifying nations are from South Asia. Asia and the Asia-Pacific region host the largest concentration of home-based workers. These areas also serve as hubs for global fashion and manufacturing supply chains. Renana Jhabvala attended the Geneva conference alongside hundreds of government and non-government delegates. As a member of the Self Employed Women's Association, the seventy-three-year-old activist witnessed the moment. She recalls the excitement and hope filling the room when the convention passed. Discussions had continued for nearly twenty-one days without a guaranteed outcome.

Inside a large hall at the International Labour Conference (ILC), a final vote resulted in a majority, leading to the adoption of a new convention. However, despite this legislative victory three decades ago, labor rights activists, economists, and experts argue that the failure to fully recognize home-based workers (HBWs) has entrenched deep structural inequalities, particularly within developing nations like India.

According to these critics, HBWs, who are predominantly women, remain effectively invisible to policymakers. Consequently, they are compelled to labor for meager wages under unsafe and exploitative conditions. Deepa Bharathi, a senior specialist in gender and non-discrimination at the ILO's Bangkok-based Decent Work Team, explained that Convention 177 was designed to acknowledge home work as "real work," granting home workers the same entitlement to labor rights as other employees.

Bharathi highlighted that in South Asia, home-based work is frequently embedded in complex subcontracting networks, rendering employment relationships difficult to identify and regulate. She noted that challenges in labor inspection, significant gaps in data, and the exclusion of home workers from policy frameworks have stalled progress. Furthermore, because most home-based workers in the region are women, their labor is often dismissed as an extension of domestic duties. This undervaluation, compounded by broader gender inequalities, has served as a major barrier to both ratifying and implementing the Convention.

Bharathi emphasized that for the ILO to strengthen the Convention's implementation, the focus must remain on visibility, fair pay, social protection, safe working conditions, access to training and childcare, and a stronger collective voice for women home-based workers.

The human cost of these systemic issues is illustrated by the story of Bano, who resides in Kapashera, a settlement on the southwestern edge of New Delhi primarily inhabited by migrant workers. The name "Kapashera" literally translates to "cotton settlement," an area known for its cotton and leather garment manufacturing units. The neighborhood's congested alleys are filled with buildings that rent out single rooms to informal worker families. Bano lives in one such room with her sons and her husband, who works as a lift operator in an upscale mall in Gurugram, a business district on New Delhi's outskirts housing several Fortune 500 companies.

Bano represents the typical trajectory of a home-based worker in India. She began her career as a beedi roller—a tiny, hand-rolled cigarette maker—in her village in Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh. After marriage, she moved to New Delhi with her husband and transitioned to stitching leather jacket pieces from home. The shift from rural employment as a beedi roller to a piece-rate worker in the city did not alleviate her precarious situation; she continues to endure long hours, irregular work, low wages, and physical strain that leaves her eyes tired and fingers aching.

The economic disparity is stark: Bano is paid barely one dollar for each piece of a leather jacket that is subsequently sold in a foreign market for $200 or more, a figure that represents more than double her average monthly income. To cut costs and maximize profit, contractors often fragment such work among several workers. "Only those who are in distress do this kind of work," Bano told Al Jazeera. "We have rent, bills, grocery and school fees to pay. How much will my husband do alone?"

Home-based workers generally fall into two categories: own account workers who have direct access to markets, and piece-rate workers who are typically employed through intermediaries.

Bano represents a growing class of workers trapped by low, arbitrary pay structures that define their vulnerability.

In a different corner of Kapashera, Sangeeta Devi, 30, finishes buttoning and repairing garments before they return to factories. She performs these tasks inside an eight-by-eight-foot room where her family of six sleeps, eats, works, and studies. She cooks, cleans, and bathes in the same confined space.

"I cannot go out and work because then who will take care of my children?" she asks.

"On any given day, there are 100 pieces of clothing in this tiny room. Each time, I have to keep them aside while doing household chores," the migrant worker from Bihar told Al Jazeera.

Sangeeta earns one dollar for every 100 garment pieces she completes.

"I really want to do a job where I can work easily from home, take care of my children and get paid well. I don't know if that's even possible," she admitted.

Her neighbor, Putul Devi, performs similar work and earns about $20 a month.

"I have been cooking on firewood because of high fuel costs. And when it rains, I don't know what to save from spoiling – the firewood or the cloth pieces that I bring home," Putul said.

Shalini Sinha, a home-based work sector specialist at WIEGO, stated that female home-based workers in India face "continued invisibility" even after three decades of recognition.

"Home continues to be seen as a place of habitat and not as a place of work," Sinha explained.

"There is also the broader issue of women's economic work not being adequately recognised in labour discourse when it is done from home. It is often seen as an extension of her care work," she added.

From an Indian perspective, Sinha emphasized an "urgent need for better statistics and a dedicated policy or law for home-based workers, which still does not exist."

Elizabeth Khumallambam, who works for the Community for Social Change and Development, noted that a social security code introduced in India in 2020 mentions home-based workers, but "no one knows" how it will be implemented on the ground.

Introduced as part of India's labour reform laws, the code consolidated nine social security-related laws into a single framework to ensure protection for all workers, including those in the unorganised sector.

"Frankly, for us the challenge begins at making workers understand the value of their own work. Many don't consider this as work and so they do not think it needs due rights and protection," Khumallambam said.

Alakh N Sharma, a labour economist, pointed to a "bias in the system" that leaves women's work behind in statistics and official counting.

According to him, technology-aided counting, probing questions, and sensitivity among investigators could help address this statistical blind spot.

"Safety concerns, mobility constraints and social norms – all these factors stop women from joining formal workplace-based employment. But the single biggest reason is often care work responsibility, particularly childcare," Sharma told Al Jazeera.

In 2022, Sandosh Kumar P, a Communist Party of India parliamentarian, moved legislation aimed at the welfare of home-based workers, but the parliament did not take it up for discussion.

In December 2024, India's ministry of labour and employment faced a parliamentary question regarding an official assessment of home-based workers and proposed laws. It replied that the Code on Social Security 2020 provides social security to the unorganised workers, including the home-based workers.

The government has officially established a national database to track these workers.

Reflecting on three decades since the historic recognition of Home-Based Workers, Jhabvala stated she does not measure such conventions or laws through the binary lens of success or failure.

She described them instead as powerful instruments of change.

"It is like a weapon, a tool of change," she explained. "If we want to fight, this option is available."

This statement underscores a reality where access to critical information remains strictly limited and privileged.

Regulatory frameworks and government directives continue to shape the operational landscape for these vulnerable populations.

The creation of such a database highlights how state oversight directly impacts public understanding and worker protections.

Jhabvala's perspective suggests that these legal tools serve as essential leverage in ongoing struggles for rights.

The availability of these options remains contingent upon active engagement and political will.