The average Indian man spends about 42 hours a week “working”, while the average Indian woman works for just 19 hours a week. “Work” in this case refers to economic, market-oriented and largely paid activities as recognised by the Indian government. But shift the focus to non-economic, household activities and the numbers change drastically: women spend nearly 35 hours on such largely unpaid work, and men barely 4 hours.
These statistics are from a landmark pilot survey of time use conducted by the Indian government in 1998-'99. Surveying men, women and children in six states, it recorded how different demographic groups distribute their time between economic, non-economic and personal work. For 15 years, no policies were adopted or changed based on that study.
Now, there is hope again: in January, the Central Statistics Office announced a large-scale time use survey across India. The aim of this will be to collect comprehensive data on the amount of time Indians spend on different kinds of work, analyse data trends based on gender, age, class and region, and finally use the data to influence policies on labour and economy.
Although the expert committee designing the survey was set up more than two years ago, conducting the study on the ground is likely to take another two years or more.
Need for a survey
“A time use survey is an important economic necessity that can provide crucial information on work not included in the country’s statistical data,” said Indira Hirway, director and professor of economics at the Centre for Development Alternatives in Ahmedabad. Hirway is a member of the expert committee for the all-India time use survey and was also the head of the technical committee that designed the pilot survey in 1998.
Through the new survey, the Central government wants to answer a range of questions. How much time do people spend on unpaid work? How prevalent is child labour? Do boys and girls spend different amounts of time studying? What is the difference in the lifestyle of the rich and the poor?
Most prominent, however, are questions of gender imbalance. How much time do women spend on household work compared to men? Is women’s participation rate in the economy underrepresented?
Overlooked tasks
The push to conduct time use surveys in India came from decades of struggle by the Indian women’s movement to demand recognition for the unaccounted paid and unpaid work women do.
The pioneering survey of this kind was conducted in 1977 by the Institute of Social Studies Trust and the National Sample Survey Organisation. It was a small-scale pilot study undertaken in six villages in Rajasthan and West Bengal, with the aim of re-evaluating female work participation rate.
“We wanted to show that women’s work is largely not counted as gainful activity and that the labour classification system excludes them,” said Devaki Jain, a feminist economist at the helm of the ISST-NSSO study.
The survey revealed that when scores of overlooked but significant tasks – such as cattle grazing, grass-cutting, weeding, winnowing, cooking and other housework – were counted as “gainful activities”, the work participation rate of women increased significantly from the rate recorded in the census. The 1971 census had stated that the work participation rate in Rajasthan was 92% of men and 15% of women. Jain’s survey in a sample of Rajasthan’s villages, however, found the rate to be 93% for men but 98% for women. Often, women who described themselves as non-workers were actually spending several hours a day on myriad agricultural work.
“We also found that in the poorest households, women are greater economic contributors than men, contrary to the common assumption that men are the main contributors while women are supplementary,” said Jain.
Share in total work
Prodded by the women’s movement, when the central government conducted its pilot time use study, the results were not very different from Jain’s. The 1998 survey covered 18,591 households in Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya.
“Our main findings were that unpaid or voluntary work is very unequally distributed between men and women, with women also spending a lot more time on economic work than officially recorded,” said Hirway.
When it came to non-economic work, women were found to spend 10 times the number of hours than men.
Even when economic and non-economic activities were grouped together, women worked longer hours than men, both in rural and urban areas.
Unsurprisingly, then, men were found to spend around eight hours more than women every week on leisure and personal care. “Women bear a larger burden of the total work, particularly in poor families,” said Hirway.
What became of the survey
The results of the pilot study were meant to spark changes in the classification of labour and influence policy changes. The survey was presented to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in 1999, but the government felt that the economic and non-economic activities studied in it needed to be better aligned with the activities listed in the National Industrial Classification and the National Classification of Occupation.
For the past decade, the ministry and the Central Statistics Office have been working with experts to create a new National Classification of Activities for Time Use Surveys, which will now be used to conduct the all-India survey. Hirway and other researchers are hoping that the new survey will inspire several policy changes, including creation of infrastructure specifically to improve the lives of the poor and setting up of care centres for children and the elderly to ease the burden on women.
“A survey can also bring a real realisation that gender equality can be achieved only if unpaid, non-economic work is shared by both men and women,” said Hirway.
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These statistics are from a landmark pilot survey of time use conducted by the Indian government in 1998-'99. Surveying men, women and children in six states, it recorded how different demographic groups distribute their time between economic, non-economic and personal work. For 15 years, no policies were adopted or changed based on that study.
Now, there is hope again: in January, the Central Statistics Office announced a large-scale time use survey across India. The aim of this will be to collect comprehensive data on the amount of time Indians spend on different kinds of work, analyse data trends based on gender, age, class and region, and finally use the data to influence policies on labour and economy.
Although the expert committee designing the survey was set up more than two years ago, conducting the study on the ground is likely to take another two years or more.
Need for a survey
“A time use survey is an important economic necessity that can provide crucial information on work not included in the country’s statistical data,” said Indira Hirway, director and professor of economics at the Centre for Development Alternatives in Ahmedabad. Hirway is a member of the expert committee for the all-India time use survey and was also the head of the technical committee that designed the pilot survey in 1998.
Through the new survey, the Central government wants to answer a range of questions. How much time do people spend on unpaid work? How prevalent is child labour? Do boys and girls spend different amounts of time studying? What is the difference in the lifestyle of the rich and the poor?
Most prominent, however, are questions of gender imbalance. How much time do women spend on household work compared to men? Is women’s participation rate in the economy underrepresented?
Overlooked tasks
The push to conduct time use surveys in India came from decades of struggle by the Indian women’s movement to demand recognition for the unaccounted paid and unpaid work women do.
The pioneering survey of this kind was conducted in 1977 by the Institute of Social Studies Trust and the National Sample Survey Organisation. It was a small-scale pilot study undertaken in six villages in Rajasthan and West Bengal, with the aim of re-evaluating female work participation rate.
“We wanted to show that women’s work is largely not counted as gainful activity and that the labour classification system excludes them,” said Devaki Jain, a feminist economist at the helm of the ISST-NSSO study.
The survey revealed that when scores of overlooked but significant tasks – such as cattle grazing, grass-cutting, weeding, winnowing, cooking and other housework – were counted as “gainful activities”, the work participation rate of women increased significantly from the rate recorded in the census. The 1971 census had stated that the work participation rate in Rajasthan was 92% of men and 15% of women. Jain’s survey in a sample of Rajasthan’s villages, however, found the rate to be 93% for men but 98% for women. Often, women who described themselves as non-workers were actually spending several hours a day on myriad agricultural work.
“We also found that in the poorest households, women are greater economic contributors than men, contrary to the common assumption that men are the main contributors while women are supplementary,” said Jain.
Share in total work
Prodded by the women’s movement, when the central government conducted its pilot time use study, the results were not very different from Jain’s. The 1998 survey covered 18,591 households in Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya.
“Our main findings were that unpaid or voluntary work is very unequally distributed between men and women, with women also spending a lot more time on economic work than officially recorded,” said Hirway.
When it came to non-economic work, women were found to spend 10 times the number of hours than men.
Even when economic and non-economic activities were grouped together, women worked longer hours than men, both in rural and urban areas.
Unsurprisingly, then, men were found to spend around eight hours more than women every week on leisure and personal care. “Women bear a larger burden of the total work, particularly in poor families,” said Hirway.
What became of the survey
The results of the pilot study were meant to spark changes in the classification of labour and influence policy changes. The survey was presented to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in 1999, but the government felt that the economic and non-economic activities studied in it needed to be better aligned with the activities listed in the National Industrial Classification and the National Classification of Occupation.
For the past decade, the ministry and the Central Statistics Office have been working with experts to create a new National Classification of Activities for Time Use Surveys, which will now be used to conduct the all-India survey. Hirway and other researchers are hoping that the new survey will inspire several policy changes, including creation of infrastructure specifically to improve the lives of the poor and setting up of care centres for children and the elderly to ease the burden on women.
“A survey can also bring a real realisation that gender equality can be achieved only if unpaid, non-economic work is shared by both men and women,” said Hirway.