In her article titled, ‘Long road ahead: From I-day speech to women’s work’ in the Indian Express on August 19, 2022, professor Bina Agarwal argued that issues surrounding child care, the ‘motherhood penalty’ and the burden of domestic chores have become less pressing for women as the fertility rate is showing a downward trend and basic technological development has made domestic chores less tedious. As such, Agarwal asks for a greater focus on demand-side factors in terms of better work opportunities for women so that more and more women can seek employment.While there is no denying that the creation of job opportunities, public infrastructure, safe public spaces and a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment require immediate attention and would go a long way in ensuring decent work opportunities for women, the necessity of sharing and supporting their care work burden also requires similar policy intervention.The Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST), New Delhi, has been researching issues related to women’s work for almost four decades now. One of the key findings common to most of our research is the fact that this idea of a gendered division of labour has been internalised to such an extent that the majority women across classes tend to prioritise their care work responsibilities over their need to seek paid work opportunities. It is therefore seen that for most women, their home and children remain the centre of all the work-related decisions they make. This is particularly true of women from the low-income strata who, unlike their middle-class counterparts, are not in a position to outsource their unpaid work responsibilities to domestic helpers and are also pressured to take on whatever paid work is available for reasons of survival.Women, therefore, mostly choose to work near their homes or from inside their homes, as part-time workers, and take up jobs in the informal sector that are low paying with negligible social security benefits. Also read: India’s Female Labour Participation Rate Falls to 16.1% As Pandemic Hits Job SectorAccording to the 68th round of the National Sample Survey (NSS), between 1993-94 and 2011-12, there was a decline in the proportion of women engaged in domestic duties who were not willing to accept paid work, in both rural and urban areas. This implied women’s increasing willingness to join the labour market. However, among the women who expressed their willingness to work, the majority (more than 70%) wanted to work on a regular, part-time basis, within the household. Over the 1993-94 to 2011-12 period, their preference for regular, part-time jobs within the household premises increased. In rural areas, an increasing percentage of women reported their preference for dairy and tailoring jobs whereas in urban areas, tailoring was the most preferred. So, the inclination towards self-employment increased, which also suggested that women preferred those types of work that could be managed easily along with their existing domestic duties. The recent Time Use Survey (TUS) also shows that in 2019, while only 21% of women in India were doing paid work, in contrast to 69% of men, almost all women (94%) were involved in unpaid caregiving and domestic activities. Further, women spend six-and-a-half hours daily in these activities while men spend two-and-a-half hours. What’s more, this gap is wider in urban areas compared to rural areas. It is also important to note the grave impact that the constant balancing of paid and unpaid work has on women, specifically those coming from marginalised backgrounds. A study by the ISST and IDS Sussex under the initiative, ‘Growth and Equal Opportunities for Women (GrOW)’, in India and Nepal showed that women often suffer from ‘time poverty’ and ‘time stretching’ as they had to stay up late or wake up early to ensure that they finished all their tasks. This leads to a lack of sleep, mental stress, frustration and anger, as well as cases of uterine collapse caused by carrying heavy loads on their backs, specifically in rural areas. The study also highlighted the fact that women often do not have a rest period. Even when they are not doing paid work, they tend to be engaged in multiple unpaid activities when they are supposedly resting, speaking to neighbours or watching television. The multiplicity and simultaneity of household, unpaid and care tasks even during periods of leisure or rest signify the excessive burdens and time constraints that women face in their everyday lives, impacting their physical health and well-being.Also read: It’s Time We Start Valuing Women’s Household Work by Paying HomemakersThe lack of necessary public infrastructure and amenities further adds to the burden of unpaid work on women. Other than the collection of material and agricultural products as per household requirements, women also face difficulties in juggling care work and domestic duties. Women with very young children and elderly care responsibilities in particular find it difficult to enter the workforce due to the lack of support structures. While there is negligible public infrastructure in India for after school care for children over the age of six, or care support for the elderly and disabled, even existing care infrastructure under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) for children below the age of six is hardly effective in supporting women due to their poor quality and complete disregard for kind of support mothers need to be able to take on paid work. Another ISST study in Delhi in 2019 showed that the majority of women employed in informal sector do not use ICDS centres as the timings and the hours for which they run are not suitable. Also, mothers are concerned about the quality of these centres and the safety of their children.Also read: Women Informal Workers: Falling Through the Cracks in the PandemicThus, the care work burden of mothers also often has an inter-generational impact on older children as well as elderly female relatives. Studies show that young girls assist their mothers in cooking, cleaning, fetching water and looking after younger siblings. In terms of sibling care, it is seen that where there is more than one older child, children would take turns to miss school and stay at home to take on care work. Even though the prevalence of joint families has decreased, studies have also shown that elderly parents or in-laws often stay near-by and have to take on the responsibility of looking after young children and helping in other domestic chores in order to support women carrying out paid work. Where there are no older children or elderly relatives to support them, mothers either leave their young child alone at home or take them to unsuitable workplaces, such as construction sites. Whatever strategy they may adopt, it hampers their ability to concentrate on work and also puts the child at risk.Hence, tending to unpaid care work, along with arduous paid labour, remains a reality for most Indian women employed in the informal sector today and is a constant area of struggle for them, for which they require support. Easy access to basic household amenities such as water, fuel, fodder and sanitation facilities, and support structures such as full-day child care support, after school care support and elderly care centres, can go a long way in ensuring women’s right to rest, leisure and their ability to negotiate for decent work opportunities. Feminist scholars and practitioners have been arguing for greater investment in the care economy as that can help in recognising how important care services are, reducing some amount of care work for women and redistributing it among others in the community through not only creating structural changes in the society’s consciousness, but also through creating better and holistic care institutions for young children as well as elderly, where care workers are recognised as workers, getting decent wages and social protection. Such a model of care support would not only ensure that women are able to engage in long hours of paid work but can also be used to ensure appropriate care and the safety of their loved ones. The pandemic has also taught us how essential it is to be taken care of; a need which cannot be fulfilled without human interaction. It is argued that one of the key ways to create more jobs is to invest in the care economy as even in a world which is rapidly moving towards automation, it is unlikely that machines can replace the intimacy of care-giving provided by humans. This could be one way in which their access to decent work and need for care support could be tackled at the same time.Any policy intervention concerned with tackling the falling female workforce participation rate needs to focus on creating jobs with fair and equal wages, safe work spaces, adequate infrastructure, among other things. However, it also needs to provide support to women with their varied care responsibilities so that they are able to access work spaces on similar terms as men do.Monika Banerjee is a Research Fellow and Program Lead, Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi.
