In 1971, the wives of textile workers in Ahmedabad, western India, became the main earners in their families overnight, after several large textile mills closed down. They were part of the 94 percent of India’s female labor force working in the informal sector—recycling waste, embroidering fabric, and selling vegetables—and thus they remained largely invisible to the government and to formal labor unions. In response, Ela Bhatt, a young lawyer, met with 100 of the women in a public park to establish the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), which would later register as a trade union and swell to the two million members it boasts today.

“As many as 865 million of our mothers, daughters, [and] sisters across the globe are not reaching their full potential to contribute to their national economies,” said Dr. Belén Garijo, CEO for healthcare and executive board member of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, at a recent Wilson Center event. The act of caregiving, and the physical and mental health impacts that accompany it, often disproportionately rest on the shoulders of society’s women.