A Reconsideration of Care: Pursing Gender-Equal Care for Health and Well-Being in India
2:30 pm IST = 9 am London
Welcome (Ruchira)
2:40 pm IST= 9:10 am London
Introduction to the project, to OSGA, Gender Care Hub (Rachel)
2:50 pm IST=9:20 am London
Kishalay Bhattacharjee (Dean of JSJC) introduces keynote speaker, Jayati Ghosh
3:00 pm IST = 9:30 am London
Keynote address by Jayati Ghosh
3:45 pm IST = 10:15 am London
Q and A
4:30 pm IST = 11:00 am London
Young Scholars Panel
Who Cares for the Care Workers? Reflecting on ASHAs through a Feminist Economics Lens,
Asmita Basak, South Asian University, New Delhi
Pandemic, Precarity, and Care Work: Gendered Health Experiences of Indian Migrant Nurses in the Gulf during COVID-19,
Anagha E, School of Global Affairs, Ambedkar University, Delhi
Care and Time Poverty in Rural Rajasthan,
Labhisha Meena, PhD candidate, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur
5:30 pm IST = 12:00 noon London
Thank you’s

Abstracts

Who Cares for the Care Workers? Reflecting on ASHAs through a Feminist Economics Lens
Asmita Basak (South Asian University, New Delhi)

“Aurat kaam se laut kar bhi kaam par hi laut-tee hai”
(Women return home to work from work)
The discontinuation of the male-dominated village health guide (VHG) scheme in 2002 could have enabled a shift in India’s rural health services, with the introduction of female Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in 2005. This paper examines ASHAs as a case of feminised care work, using a feminist economic lens to unpack the structural and ideological framings that continue to inform India’s healthcare system. Methodologically, studying the ASHAs presented the challenge of tracing invisibilised, gendered labour within a policy framework that deliberately designates them as “volunteers,”paid only through performance-based honorariums. This framing draws on an economic lineage that codes care work as moral and selfless (seva) rather than as productive or waged labour. Ethnographic and document-based inquiry into ASHAs’ everyday practices and mobilisation strategies revealed how such categories obscure the material realities of their labour while structurally limiting their bargaining power.
While the central focus of ASHAs remains maternal and women’s health, the female healthcare force, now consisting of well over a million members, has expanded to immunisations, providing contraceptives and family planning advice, preventing infections, and caring for infants and young children. Nevertheless, the state’s refusal to recognise the ASHAs as workers excludes their much important care services from the formal definitions of work. Care work by ASHAs allows for rethinking gendered labour and welfare delivery, offering insights into recognition, organisation, and systemic invisibility of care.
The COVID-19 pandemic became a moment of rupture: as “frontline warriors,” ASHAs not only exposed the systemic precarity of their roles but collectively protested for recognition and rights. This moment influenced my research focus by redefining care not as peripheral or additional work, but as politically significant and centrally important to knowledge. It necessitated a reassessment of what defines “work,” and how knowledge practices must address gendered exclusions rooted in both policy and economic logic.

Pandemic, Precarity, and Care Work: Gendered Health Experiences of Indian Migrant Nurses in the Gulf during COVID-19
Anagha E (Teaching Faculty, School of Global Affairs, Ambedkar University)

Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the structural inequities embedded within global migrant labour regimes, particularly in feminised care occupations such as nursing. This paper critically examines the gendered health experiences of Indian migrant nurses engaged in transnational care work in Gulf Cooperation Council countries during the pandemic. It analyses emigration trends of nurses from India to the GCC in the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods, while examining overseas recruitment policies with particular attention to the role of state and sectoral interest groups. It further interrogates the social construction of nursing as a gendered profession and form of care labour, and analyses how this construction shapes and sustains gendered inequalities within transnational labour markets, while engaging with debates on migrant labour health by foregrounding the work- and health-related experiences of Indian nurses in the Gulf during the pandemic.
The research adopts a qualitative design framed by narrative inquiry into identity and lived experience within transnational care settings. Primary data is collected through life story interviews and close observation. The findings highlight that the pandemic created heightened employment precarity for migrant nurses in the Gulf. Deteriorating labour conditions, increased workloads, extended working hours, psychological stress, discrimination, stigma, and exposure to health risks significantly affected their health and livelihoods. Gendered constructions and persistent stereotyping of nursing as women’s care work further reinforced these vulnerabilities, exacerbating inequalities both at destination workplaces and within broader migration regimes.

Care and Time Poverty in Rural Rajasthan
Labhisha Meena, (PhD candidate, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur)
Time poverty has been defined and redefined based on contextual realities time and again. Women’s experience of time poverty, especially of women from rural contexts in India, have reflected that the issues of work-life conflict and burden of unpaid work persist, as elucidated by various scholars based on recent time use data. Parallelly, various international organizations have recommended public policy provisions such as improved access to water, fuel, social protection and care services, as they are found to alleviate women’s domestic and time burdens. However, there remains a dearth of studies in rural Indian context, which captures the extent to which these policies transform women’s lives.
This study engages with the concept of time poverty using the 3Rs framework, i.e. Recognition, Reduction, and Redistribution Framework by Diane Elson, and aims to capture how certain public policy provisions affect women’s time poverty. The study is contextualised in rural Rajasthan, and aims to present primary research on how lives have been influenced by Ujjwala Yojana and Jal Jivan Mission implementation in rural Rajasthan, with respect to 3R Framework. The study delves deeper into various methodological challenges as time poverty line is not universally defined and can be evaluated in absolute or relative terms, thus making the claims of “reduction” different to evaluate.
Date: 13 February 2026, 9:00
Venue: Online - Teams
Speaker: Various Speakers
Organiser: Professor Rachel Murphy (University of Oxford)
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NjQyMjk5OTMtM2ZlMi00M2ZiLWI5ZTItOGRiMTQ1ZWU4MjMy%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22c7e79b9d-ece9-4133-8743-b6cad26c574f%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2
Audience: Public
Editors: Clare Salter, Lisa Haynes