How to measure unpaid care work and address its inequalities?

The manifestos for the ongoing Assembly elections have promised various forms of payment to homemakers, thus putting the spotlight on the unpaid domestic work done by women.
From a monthly assistance to women family heads in Tamil Nadu to an enhanced Orunodoi scheme in Assam, pension for housewives in Kerala and income support to female heads of households in West Bengal, various proposals for ‘empowerment’ have been put forward by various parties to reach out to women voters.

Unpaid care work, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), refers to all unpaid services provided within a household for its members, including care of persons, housework and voluntary community work.
These activities are considered work because theoretically one could pay a third person to perform them.
In India, women spend 299 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services while men spend 97 minutes, according to the ‘NSS Report- Time Use in India 2019’. This inequality has a direct correlation with participation in the formal economy.
India has slipped 28 places to rank 140th among 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021.
Among the drivers of this decline is a decrease in women’s labour force participation rate, which fell from 24.8 percent to 22.3 percent as per report. It also estimated that earned income of women in India is only one-fifth of men’s, which puts the country among the bottom 10 globally on this indicator.
The economic contribution of women is 17% of India’s GDP, less than half the global average.
However, as the time use survey shows, women spend a disproportionate amount of time (compared to men) on unpaid domestic work, which is ironically the ‘hidden engine’ that keeps economies, businesses and societies running and contributes significantly to individual well-being.

The first step in addressing the inequalities in unpaid care work is to recognise its value. This requires data, especially on time-use. The NSS Time Use report was the first such countrywide survey to be conducted in India.
The next step would be reducing unpaid care work by investment in physical infrastructure like clean water and sanitation, energy and public transport, and in social infrastructure such as care and health services and education
According to an Oxfam report, in households with access to the government’s National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP), women spent 22 minutes less per day on average on care work and 60 minutes per day more on paid work..
Investments in and expansion of care services for children and childhood education, for example, have the potential to generate jobs, many of which could be taken up by women.
More equitable childcare and maternity policies could help reduce the ‘motherhood penalty’. This approach would help address discriminatory social institutions, encourage awareness and ‘de-feminise’ care work.
The importance of unpaid care work in addressing gender issues is delineated under the Sustainable Development Goal 5, which talks about recognising unpaid domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies.

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