The Un'Care'd

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2021 by WEF, India went down 28 places from the previous rank of 112 to currently being at 140. While the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown also played a significant role in increasing India’s gender gap by 4.3 per cent, the World Bank has estimated that female participation in the labour force has decreased to around 20 per cent over the last three decades. This decline in economic opportunities and workforce participation was initially chalked up to women leaving work to go for higher education. But the increase in the number of women going for higher education is just around 5 per cent over the last decade.

In 2019, The National Statistical Office (NSO) conducted the first Time Use Survey to measure the participation of men and women in paid and unpaid activities. The survey provided information on the time spent in unpaid caregiving activities, volunteer work, unpaid domestic service-producing activities of the household members. It also included information on time spent on learning, socializing, leisure activities, self-care activities, among other activities by the household members.

The numbers that came out of this survey are a testimony to the gender disparity in terms of female participation in the workforce and male participation in unpaid caregiving work. According to the survey, the average Indian woman spends about 299 minutes per day, or a little under five hours, in unpaid work. As per the survey, 57.3 percent males were engaged in employment and related activities while for females, the participation figures were at a low 18.4 percent. This inequality has a direct correlation with the participation of women in the workforce and subsequently in the formal economy.

If the time women spent on unpaid labour gets tallied as the time men spend on paid labour, the figures of female labour force participation rate come up to around 81 percent, compared to 77 percent from men. 

According to a report by Oxfam, Indian women put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work every day, estimated to be a contribution of nearly ₹19 trillion to the Indian economy. To put it in context, this contribution is nearly twenty times the government’s budget on education. And yet, India spends less than one per cent of GDP on care work infrastructure and services, including pre-primary education, maternity, disability and sickness benefits, and long-term care as per the International Labour Organisation. 

Image Credits: MC-Leprosy

Even in terms of paid care work, Indian women earn less than their male counterparts. Women working as nursery workers, domestic workers are always on the receiving end of meagre salary, bound by no guarantees of employment longevity, bad benefits and long hours. All these factors contribute to keeping the vicious cycle of poverty running for women, in addition to the time poverty they already deal with.

The economy does not look at unpaid labour by women as formal work. In a society as patriarchal as India’s, women by default are relegated to caregiving work. This gendered division of labour more than often prevents women from entering the workforce because women are made primarily responsible for the unpaid household work. The lack of opportunity to join the workforce leaves these women to be financially dependent on their spouse and other family members, often leading to issues of financial abuse at their hands.

An argument often made by people in justifying their rationale behind keeping women formally unemployed is that women are born nurturers. The worth of a woman gets tied to her ability to give birth to offspring, managing the day to day lives of the family and continuing to do so until her body fails her. Women can be nurturing and many women prioritise motherhood, and many balance their professional lives with their roles as a mother and spouse. But the lack of appreciation and support that these women get are a hindrance, not only to their overall growth but to the Indian economy as well. 

According to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, about 49 per cent of the total job losses during the Covid-19 pandemic were of women. Termed “shecession”, this ouster of women from the workforce is detrimental to the all-round inclusive economy the state is trying to build. An increase in the spending on care work infrastructure and creating more public sector care facilities would lighten the load of the unpaid work women perform. This could create opportunities for more women to join the work sector. The unpaid care work that women do daily allows for the men to go out and contribute to the country’s economy and growth. One could say that women do this out of love, but love is not all-sustaining. Money is. 

(Originally published in Share A Book India's March newsletter)