Ministry of statistics and programme implementation's '2024 Time Use Survey (TUS)' shows women aged 15-59 spend 283 mins a day on unpaid domestic work, and another 58 mins on caregiving, including cooking, cleaning, fetching water, and minding children and the elderly.
Men spend 26 and 16 mins on these activities, respectively. In total, women devote 341 mins a day to unpaid work compared to 42 mins for men. This disproportionate burden creates a form of time poverty for women that constrains their participation in the labour market and reinforces rigid gender norms.
With over 5 hrs of the day consumed by household obligations, many married women, particularly those with young children, are unable to commit to rigid, full-time schedules that most formal jobs demand. Instead, they are pushed toward part-time, flexible or home-based work - hard to find, largely informal and poorly paid.
Rural women in India are unwilling to migrate even 15-30 km to where they can access better jobs because of domestic responsibilities. India's female labour force participation (FLFP) has increased in recent years to 42%, although it remains well behind men at 79%. However, much of this increase has been driven by self-employment in agriculture. This suggests that women are taking on work that can be done alongside their domestic responsibilities, rather than substituting one for the other.
When women are unable to earn a meaningful income, the household rationale for the male-breadwinner model strengthens, and division of labour that produced the initial inequality becomes self-perpetuating. A 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 'How Indians View Gender Roles in Families and Society', found that 43% view earning money as primarily a man's responsibility, and 80% believe that men should have more right to a job when employment is scarce. Time poverty does not just reflect traditional gender roles. It also actively reinforces them by preventing women from becoming economic providers.
The most intuitive policy response is the expansion of childcare infrastructure - creches, anganwadis and employer-provided daycare. Global evidence on such interventions is mixed. Take-up of subsidised childcare in Egypt was low, at least partly because women expressed concerns about child safety and quality of care, a key concern in developing countries.
On the other hand, a 2020 Journal of Development Effectiveness study, 'Access to affordable daycare and women's economic opportunities: Evidence from a cluster-randomised intervention in India', found that take-up was high, with close to half the targeted women using the facility, but the impact on their employment outcomes was marginal.
Laws that mandate employers to offer women amenities, such as maternity leave, childcare and the right to flexible hours, can lead to reduced pay for women and lower employment rates. In India, after paid maternity leave was extended to 26 weeks in 2017, with the cost borne by employers, a quarter of firms claimed they were now compelled to reduce hiring women because of the increased costs associated with providing maternity leave.
Norms around the division of household work are stubbornly universal. A 2023 Pew Research study, 'In a Growing Share of US Marriages, Husbands and Wives Earn About the Same', finds that in American marriages where both spouses earn approximately the same, women do 4.5 more hours of housework and childcare per week than men. Even in Sweden, which has the smallest gender gap in unpaid work in Europe, women spend 220 mins a day on unpaid work, compared to 171 mins by men. India sits at one extreme. But no country has reached gender parity.
If norms are sticky and mandates can misfire, what does this imply for policy? Expanding the public provision of childcare and reforming financing of maternity benefits so that costs are shared, rather than loaded onto individual employers, are necessary steps. But the most transformative policy may be the least-gendered sounding one: creating conditions for firms to grow, formalise and compete for labour.
Evidence suggests that export-led industrialisation has pulled millions of women into jobs, even in countries with deeply conservative gender norms. Bangladesh's garment boom employed 4 mn workers, roughly 80% women, in a society no less conservative than India's.
When firms expand and need labour, they hire women. When wages rise enough, working becomes economically rational even for traditional families, as the experience of countries like South Korea suggests. No country has successfully legislated its way to gender parity in the distribution of care work within the home. But where economies have generated sufficient demand for workers, they have pulled women into the labour force, and norms have adjusted.
For India, the implication is that the most effective gender policy may not be a gender policy at all - it may be an economic growth strategy that makes women's labour too valuable to leave at home.
Men spend 26 and 16 mins on these activities, respectively. In total, women devote 341 mins a day to unpaid work compared to 42 mins for men. This disproportionate burden creates a form of time poverty for women that constrains their participation in the labour market and reinforces rigid gender norms.
With over 5 hrs of the day consumed by household obligations, many married women, particularly those with young children, are unable to commit to rigid, full-time schedules that most formal jobs demand. Instead, they are pushed toward part-time, flexible or home-based work - hard to find, largely informal and poorly paid.
Rural women in India are unwilling to migrate even 15-30 km to where they can access better jobs because of domestic responsibilities. India's female labour force participation (FLFP) has increased in recent years to 42%, although it remains well behind men at 79%. However, much of this increase has been driven by self-employment in agriculture. This suggests that women are taking on work that can be done alongside their domestic responsibilities, rather than substituting one for the other.
When women are unable to earn a meaningful income, the household rationale for the male-breadwinner model strengthens, and division of labour that produced the initial inequality becomes self-perpetuating. A 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 'How Indians View Gender Roles in Families and Society', found that 43% view earning money as primarily a man's responsibility, and 80% believe that men should have more right to a job when employment is scarce. Time poverty does not just reflect traditional gender roles. It also actively reinforces them by preventing women from becoming economic providers.
The most intuitive policy response is the expansion of childcare infrastructure - creches, anganwadis and employer-provided daycare. Global evidence on such interventions is mixed. Take-up of subsidised childcare in Egypt was low, at least partly because women expressed concerns about child safety and quality of care, a key concern in developing countries.
On the other hand, a 2020 Journal of Development Effectiveness study, 'Access to affordable daycare and women's economic opportunities: Evidence from a cluster-randomised intervention in India', found that take-up was high, with close to half the targeted women using the facility, but the impact on their employment outcomes was marginal.
Laws that mandate employers to offer women amenities, such as maternity leave, childcare and the right to flexible hours, can lead to reduced pay for women and lower employment rates. In India, after paid maternity leave was extended to 26 weeks in 2017, with the cost borne by employers, a quarter of firms claimed they were now compelled to reduce hiring women because of the increased costs associated with providing maternity leave.
Norms around the division of household work are stubbornly universal. A 2023 Pew Research study, 'In a Growing Share of US Marriages, Husbands and Wives Earn About the Same', finds that in American marriages where both spouses earn approximately the same, women do 4.5 more hours of housework and childcare per week than men. Even in Sweden, which has the smallest gender gap in unpaid work in Europe, women spend 220 mins a day on unpaid work, compared to 171 mins by men. India sits at one extreme. But no country has reached gender parity.
If norms are sticky and mandates can misfire, what does this imply for policy? Expanding the public provision of childcare and reforming financing of maternity benefits so that costs are shared, rather than loaded onto individual employers, are necessary steps. But the most transformative policy may be the least-gendered sounding one: creating conditions for firms to grow, formalise and compete for labour.
Evidence suggests that export-led industrialisation has pulled millions of women into jobs, even in countries with deeply conservative gender norms. Bangladesh's garment boom employed 4 mn workers, roughly 80% women, in a society no less conservative than India's.
When firms expand and need labour, they hire women. When wages rise enough, working becomes economically rational even for traditional families, as the experience of countries like South Korea suggests. No country has successfully legislated its way to gender parity in the distribution of care work within the home. But where economies have generated sufficient demand for workers, they have pulled women into the labour force, and norms have adjusted.
For India, the implication is that the most effective gender policy may not be a gender policy at all - it may be an economic growth strategy that makes women's labour too valuable to leave at home.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)
Anisha Sharma
Anisha Sharma is associate professor of economics, Ashoka University