A Mumbai company training and employing women in the slums

In our series The Age of Work, Marketplace is looking at how changing demographics are reshaping the global economy.

Last month, “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal and ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson, our project partner on the series, travelled to Mumbai, India, for the latest installment of the series. India — with a median age of 29 — is a few years away from its demographic peak.

In order for India’s economy to take full advantage of its demographics, economists we spoke to said that it has to increase the number of women in the workforce. The women’s labor force participation rate in India is 32.4% — almost 24 percentage points lower than it is in the United States. The men’s labor force participation rate in India, for comparison, is 78%.

These dynamics inspired Pushpika Freitas to start her company, MarketPlace: Handwork of India, in 1980. Freitas is a social worker from Mumbai who now lives in Chicago, Illinois.

“One of the things I remember very clearly before I started MarketPlace was meeting a young girl — maybe 12 — during the day, and saying, ‘Hey, why aren’t you in school?’” Freitas said. “She said, ‘My mother had to go to work, and I have to look after my younger siblings.’ And that’s when I realized how little opportunity women have to even earn an income.”

Freitas and her sister trained women how to sew and embroider, and they eventually started making and selling clothing. Consumers in India didn’t buy the goods, but when Freitas went to visit a third sister in Chicago, she brought some of the clothing with her.

“I just filled my suitcase full of stuff and had a house party, and people just loved the garments,” Freitas said. “I thought OK, well, maybe the market is here — and that’s how MarketPlace was born here.”

Nowadays, MarketPlace: Handwork of India produces two annual collections that they export for sale in the United States. Ryssdal and Richardson visited the company’s headquarters in Mumbai’s Santacruz East neighborhood.

“We have around 180 women that are working with us, divided into about ten cooperatives, which means that every artist is an equal owner of that entity,” said Saumya Gautam, the chief operating officer.

“We find these kinds of slum areas where we can find women who want to work but are not able to,” she said. “The majority of the women that we’re working with, they’ve never earned their own money before.”

Gautam led Ryssdal and Richardson through the slum to visit one of the cooperatives. They spoke to about a dozen MarketPlace: Handwork of India artisans who create the garments that are exported to the U.S.

Sara Kambli, a 37-year-old artisan who has been working at MarketPlace for nine years, said this job was her first.

“I came to Mumbai right after my marriage, so this place became like a second home to me,” Kambli said through Gautam, who translated. “Before this, everybody knew me by my husband’s name, like, ‘I am this person’s wife.’ But now, when I’m walking around, they’re like, ‘This is Sara from work.’”

Another woman, Deepika Surti, said she’d been working in embroidery at MarketPlace for 25 years.

“All of us are from different backgrounds, different cultures, but all of us have the same problems,” Surti said through Gautam. “We all might bring different skills to the table, but that gives us power. It unites us all together, and that feels really good.”

Click the audio player above to hear more.