Introduction

The International Labour Organization estimates that, globally, approximately two billion people are employed in the informal economy. Of this, 740 million are female workers [1]. In Asia and Africa, a large proportion of non-agricultural female workforce is employed in the informal economy in urban areas. Women workers are concentrated in sectors such as domestic work, street vending, waste picking and home-based work [2,3]. However, extant literature has shown that women in the urban informal economy remain ‘invisible’ [4,5] and are rendered vulnerable by low and often irregular incomes, limited or no access to social security benefits, and noncompliance of labour protections such as maternity leave and minimum wage.