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PART I
Conceptual and methodological evolution in understanding womenâs unpaid work
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Contemporary discussions on gender, unpaid work and care are often framed within an economic growth perspective, linking unpaid work to its implications for womenâs participation in the economy. One example of the growth argument is found in the McKinsey Global Institute report (MGI, 2015), which suggested that in a âfull potentialâ scenario in which women played an identical role in labour markets to that of men, as much as $28 trillion, or 26 per cent, could be added to global annual GDP by 2025. Time spent on unpaid work and care is seen as a barrier to womenâs participation in paid work; the focus on unpaid care within this framework is then primarily based on an assumption that releasing women from care work will inevitably lead to their higher participation in paid work, in turn, leading to womenâs economic empowerment. With more nuance, the UN High Level Panel on Womenâs Economic Empowerment (UN, 2016) identified seven âproven and promisingâ drivers to expand womenâs economic empowerment. These include ârecognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid work and careâ.
While the available evidence can be contested on whether any causality has been proven between the time spent on unpaid work and that on paid work, or between paid work and empowerment, the growth perspective continues to influence analysis of both paid and unpaid work of women. A second perspective is that of gender equality, viewing the redistribution of unpaid work as one of the critical aspects of enabling gender equality overall. The relation between gender equality and growth is uncertain. Esther Duflo finds the evidence between growth and gender equality to be positive (Duflo, 2012). On the other hand, another review of the literature suggests that while greater gender equality has generally contributed positively to growth, the reverse, that is growth contributing to greater gender equality is a less consistent relationship (Kabeer and Natali, 2013).
Taking the level of womenâs paid work as the point of departure for a discussion on womenâs unpaid work, the nature of the concerns in India have taken on an additional nuance in the past 15 years or so. The concern with low levels of womenâs workforce participation in India â as compared to that of men, as well as compared to that of women in other countries â is an old one. In the past decade or so, official statistics show a decline in womenâs workforce participation, especially marked in rural areas since 2004â2005. Thus, it is not just low levels, but declining levels, of womenâs presence in the paid workforce that becomes the focus. Many different reasons have been advanced for this apparently paradoxical picture in a growing economy, including increased participation in education, absence of âsuitableâ opportunities, withdrawal due to an income effect, counting and comparability problems (e.g. see Das, 2006; Pradhan et al, 2014; Chatterjee et al, 2015; Kapsos et al, 2016; Mehrotra and Parida, 2017; Fletcher et al, 2018). Decline at younger ages may be partly due to increased participation in education, and along with this, aspirations for âbetterâ work, both in urban and rural areas. There is a decline at older ages too. For example, in the 35â39 years age group, rural womenâs LFPR fell from 64.2 in 2004â2005 to 48.1 in 2011â2012, and urban womenâs LFPR fell from 34 to 28.4 over the same period. Moreover, data for 2017â2018 from the PLFS suggests that the decline has continued. If less time on unpaid work leads to increased participation in the labour force, it can be queried if the reverse holds true as well, with reduced participation in the labour force being the result of more time spent on unpaid care.
With either the growth or the equality perspective, the actual measurement of work is the starting point. There are some assumptions underlying measurement and analysis of paid work that need to be examined. First, the assumption that womenâs paid work is being properly measured. It is well known that womenâs work in India is largely informal, and that there has been an increase in informal work even within the organised sector. There is some informal work that is visible and a lot that is relatively invisible; some part of work that is measured and accounted for and another that remains unaccounted for. Many kinds of work from agriculture to home-based work display seasonality. When earnings are low, people engage in multiple types of work and this makes for complicated recording. With informal work that is sub-contracted to home-based workers there is an absence of any clear employer which has implications for the recording of the work and for workersâ entitlements. It has been seen that women working...
