Health

At IWWAGE, we recognise that women’s health and economic empowerment are deeply interconnected. Access to quality, affordable healthcare is essential for women to enter, remain in, and progress in the workforce. Improved health outcomes strengthen women’s economic participation, while greater economic agency enables better health, creating a reinforcing cycle of empowerment.

IWWAGE’s work on women’s health focuses on:

Linking health and economic participation

Examining how health outcomes influence women’s ability to participate, retain, and advance in paid work across sectors and life stages.

Improving measurement and visibility of women’s work

Bringing attention to under-recognised areas such as menstrual and menopausal health, and their implications for productivity, dignity, and long-term labour market engagement.

Identifying systemic barriers and enablers

Analysing how health systems, workplace practices, and social norms shape women’s access to care and health-related decision-making.

Integrating health into economic and workplace policy

Advocating for the inclusion of women’s health needs within labour, social protection, and workplace policies to support sustained economic empowerment.

Through this work, IWWAGE positions women’s health as a strategic lever for inclusive growth, ensuring that women’s health needs are visible, valued, and embedded within broader economic and social policy agendas.

Brief

A Crisis in Care India’s Ageing

The global population is ageing, presenting complex challenges and new opportunities.The policy brief draws on insights from a roundtable discussion that brought together sectoral experts, practitioners, and academics, along with secondary research.The discussion served as a platform to examine the current state of eldercare in India, identify critical gaps, and explore actionable solutions to increase women’s participation in the formal eldercare workforce.