Women

1. Understanding women’s vulnerability and social protection

Women’s vulnerability is not an inherent characteristic: it is produced by unequal power, discriminatory institutions and unequal access to resources. Social protection includes measures that prevent deprivation, protect against shocks, promote livelihoods and transform exclusionary social relations. For women, these measures must cover both conventional risks, such as illness and unemployment, and gender-specific risks, including maternity-related income loss, domestic violence and disproportionate unpaid care responsibilities.

A life-cycle perspective identifies changing needs. Girls require adequate nutrition, schooling and protection from child marriage. Working-age women need reproductive healthcare, safe mobility, maternity support, childcare and equal employment opportunities. Older women face widowhood, weak pension coverage, chronic illness and loss of control over property. These stages are interconnected: adolescent malnutrition and interrupted education can reduce lifetime earnings and worsen maternal and child health.

Women are not a homogeneous category. A Dalit agricultural labourer, a woman with a disability, a migrant domestic worker and a salaried professional face different combinations of insecurity. Single women, widows, homeless women and survivors of trafficking may lack family support or documentation. Universal basic services therefore need additional targeted assistance, accessible delivery and individual entitlements that do not depend entirely on marital status or a male household head.

• Protective measures: pensions, shelters, food assistance and emergency relief.
• Preventive and promotive measures: insurance, maternity support, childcare, skills and livelihoods.
• Transformative measures: equal rights, asset ownership, collective organisation and freedom from violence.

2. Constitutional foundations and legal safeguards

Articles 14 and 15 establish equality and prohibit sex-based discrimination, while Article 16 protects equality of opportunity in public employment. Article 15(3) enables affirmative measures for women. Among the Directive Principles, Article 39(a) concerns adequate livelihoods, Article 39(d) equal pay for equal work, Article 42 maternity relief and humane working conditions, and Article 47 nutrition and public health. Article 51A(e) makes renouncing practices derogatory to women’s dignity a fundamental duty.

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, recognises physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic abuse. It provides protection orders, residence orders, monetary relief and other remedies. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013, requires an Internal Committee in workplaces with ten or more employees. District-level Local Committees address complaints from establishments with fewer than ten workers and complaints against employers. These safeguards connect bodily security with women’s ability to retain employment and income.

The Maternity Benefit Act provides employment-linked maternity protection, but eligibility and establishment coverage leave many informal workers outside its effective reach. Its 2017 amendment introduced a crèche requirement for establishments with fifty or more employees. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, strengthened daughters’ coparcenary rights in Mitakshara joint family property. Nevertheless, legal entitlement does not automatically produce actual control over assets; awareness, documentation, legal aid and enforcement remain essential.

• Women qualify for free legal services under Section 12 of the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987.
• Protection should integrate civil remedies, criminal justice where applicable, healthcare, shelter and livelihood rehabilitation.

3. India’s social protection architecture for women

Mission Shakti combines safety interventions with empowerment support. Sambal includes One Stop Centres and the Women Helpline. Samarthya brings together interventions such as Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, Palna childcare services, Shakti Sadan and Sakhi Niwas working women’s hostels. One Stop Centres are intended to connect women affected by violence with medical assistance, police facilitation, legal support, counselling and temporary shelter rather than requiring repeated visits to disconnected offices.

PMMVY provides conditional maternity assistance to eligible women. Under PMMVY 2.0, assistance is ₹5,000 for the first child and ₹6,000 for the second child when the second child is a girl. These scheme rules should be distinguished from Section 4 of the National Food Security Act, 2013, which provides for maternity benefit of not less than ₹6,000, subject to its statutory provisions. Anganwadi services under Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0 support maternal nutrition, early childhood care and related services.

MGNREGA offers a demand-based rural employment guarantee with equal statutory wage rates for women and men. DAY-NRLM supports women’s self-help groups, credit access and livelihood institutions. The National Social Assistance Programme includes centrally supported widow and old-age pensions, often supplemented by states. Public food distribution and publicly financed healthcare reduce household risks, but household-level coverage alone cannot ensure that women receive adequate nutrition, timely treatment or control over resources.

• Janani Suraksha Yojana promotes institutional delivery through conditional cash assistance.
• Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram provides specified free maternal and infant health entitlements in public health institutions.

4. Persistent gaps in coverage and implementation

The largest structural gap is the mismatch between employment-linked benefits and women’s concentration in informal, casual, agricultural and unpaid family work. Domestic workers, home-based producers and many self-employed women lack predictable maternity income and contributory pensions. Employer-financed maternity benefits can also create incentives against hiring women unless complemented by broader financing and effective anti-discrimination enforcement. Registration on a worker database, by itself, is not equivalent to receiving a social security benefit.

Unpaid care work restricts women’s time for education, paid work and public participation. Cash transfers cannot substitute for childcare, drinking water, sanitation, affordable transport or eldercare. Weak frontline staffing and inaccessible facilities particularly affect women with disabilities and residents of remote areas. Violence adds further costs through lost wages, displacement, medical expenditure and dependence on perpetrators, making immediate subsistence support an important component of survivor protection.

Delivery systems can reproduce exclusion through identity mismatches, bank-account problems, inaccessible digital interfaces and inadequate information. Migrants may struggle to access locally administered services after moving. A bank account in a woman’s name does not necessarily mean she controls withdrawals or household spending. Fragmented departments, delayed payments and weak grievance mechanisms reduce effectiveness. Evaluation must therefore distinguish administrative outputs, such as accounts opened or beneficiaries enrolled, from outcomes such as improved nutrition, income security and autonomy.

• Assess coverage, adequacy, timeliness, accessibility and dignity together.
• Disaggregate results by caste, tribe, disability, age, migration status and location.

5. Towards gender-responsive and rights-based protection

A stronger approach combines a universal social protection floor with additional support for women facing greater disadvantage. Essential elements include accessible healthcare, adequate nutrition, basic income security during maternity and old age, and protection against violence. Benefits should be sufficiently predictable to prevent distress borrowing and should preserve women’s individual claims. Expansion of maternity protection beyond formal employment requires sustainable public financing and coordination between labour, health and women-and-child-development institutions.

Care infrastructure should be treated as economic infrastructure. Reliable crèches, community childcare, safe hostels, eldercare and accessible transport can improve women’s employment choices. Better remuneration, training and working conditions for Anganwadi workers, ASHAs and other frontline personnel strengthen service quality while recognising the predominantly female care workforce. Policies should also encourage men’s participation in care rather than reinforcing the assumption that caregiving is exclusively women’s responsibility.

Implementation should combine local facilitation with portability, assisted digital access and functioning offline alternatives. Panchayats, urban local bodies, self-help groups and community organisations can identify excluded women and support applications, but must not become gatekeepers. Gender budgeting should track actual expenditure and outcomes rather than merely label allocations as women-oriented. Social audits, confidential complaints, independent evaluation and time-bound grievance redress can make protection accountable. Success ultimately means greater agency, safety and resilience, not simply more scheme enrolments.

• Apply the care-work framework: recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care, and reward and represent paid care workers.
• Combine income transfers with quality services, enforceable rights and women’s collective voice.

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