Gendered Patterns of Unpaid Care Work Distribution in India: An Empirical Exploration from First Large Scale Time Use Survey 2019

Feminist economists have long argued to broaden the scope of economics to encompass the unpaid work performed in the domestic sphere. The Marxist feminists, during the 1970s, emphasized the problems of unpaid care work, referring it to ‘housework’, ‘domestic labour’, or ‘reproductive labour’ (Berik and Konger 2021, p. 6). Their critical argument was that women primarily serve men within the household as well as sustain the capitalist economy through their reproductive role (Hartmann 1979, pp. 1-33). It is worth noting that the strand of Marxist feminist scholarships, by the end of the 1980s, was subsided, and hence, the explanation of women’s oppression at the domestic space owing to the labour theory of value remained overlooked. However, the role of unpaid care work remained at the forefront of discussion in academic scholarship. One crucial debate that went on amongst feminist economists was whether unpaid care activities fall within the domain of “work” or not. Margaret Reid (1934) pioneered developing the theories and methodologies for consumption within the domestic spheres. Her third-party criterion suggests that unpaid care can be treated as “work” since caring activities like child care, elder care, cooking, cleaning, etc., can be delegated to a third person.