Women’s Unpaid Work

Women’s unpaid work burden, a concern since many decades, be it under the framework of economic work or housework or care work has evolved over time. With the inclusion of unpaid work under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, this issue now has gained global attention. An important point that is often deliberated in all discussions on unpaid work is the absence of reliable statistics and issues of measurement. It is in this context that this collection of essays on measurement and provisioning of time use statistics turns out to be a rich source of reference. Statistics on unpaid work is not collected, and even when it is available, the data fails to capture the varied dimensions of this segment of work due to conceptual and methodological issues and challenges. Many efforts to measure unpaid work across the world have brought out varied experiences, which can surely contribute towards addressing the larger challenges of designing and collecting time use data. However, these experiences are not documented or analysed systematically and it is this gap that this volume is trying to bridge. Further, the analysis of the existing time use data linking it with macroeconomic policy is important for advocacy around time use surveys (TUS) which is a major contribution of the volume.

Concepts and Methods