There is a growing focus on generating evidence on violence against informal women workers across the world.

“Women hold up half the sky”, the Chinese saying goes. But we need to recognize that it is not an equal world for women, globally and in India.

It is now common practice to infer the social status of women from their demographic characteristics. Yet it is not so easy to read through demographic progress, in terms of declines in mortality and fertility, to make unambiguous judgments about trends in women's social standing.

Status literally means position in relation to others. The status enjoyed by women in any society is an index of the standard of its social organisation.