Unpaid Work by Women: A State-level Analysis of Evidence from Time-use Survey

Arpita Chakraborty and Rajib Sutradhar

Indian Journal of Human Development, 2023, vol. 17, issue 3, 461-476

Abstract: Low and declining female labour force participation in India over the past two decades has turned attention to the high unpaid work time spent by women. The question, however, remains whether women spend more time on unpaid work because there are not enough jobs or whether it is time spent on unpaid work that is holding them back from participation in the labour force. Against this backdrop, the present article explores India’s nationally representative time-use survey conducted by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) to estimate factors that explain variations in time spent by women in unpaid work at the state level. The results show that structural transformation, entailing a reduction in employment in agriculture and an increase in the share of industries in state GDP, does not necessarily entail any reduction in unpaid time spent by women if the technology embodied in industrialisation is not gender-friendly. Worryingly, progress in female literacy recorded by states is no guarantee of a reduction in unpaid work by women. However, a gender-friendly atmosphere does make a difference in the reduction in unpaid work reported by women. Similarly, targeted public policy intervention does relax the constraints that women face at home, with a positive effect on unpaid work time.

Keywords: Unpaid work; time-use survey; female empowerment; structural transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09737030231218147 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:inddev:v:17:y:2023:i:3:p:461-476

DOI: 10.1177/09737030231218147

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Indian Journal of Human Development
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().