The unpaid burden: For Indian women, degrees don’t ease household chores

Tending to domestic chores and caring for family members leaves many Indian women with little time to join the formal workforce. But even those who are able to get a job don't get relief from unpaid housework.

This is evident from a Mint analysis of granular data from the government’s second pan-India Time Use Survey, conducted in 2024. The nationally representative survey, which covered over 450,000 respondents, helps us sketch what a day in the life of the average Indian looks like.

Gender divide, by the clock

The survey records the time Indians spend on 165 specific activities across 56 groups. The list is comprehensive, ranging from paid work, sleep, eating and leisure to reading, shopping and cooking. The analysis shows men and women spend roughly the same amount of time sleeping, but that’s where the similarity ends.

The average Indian woman spends more time in a day managing the household’s meals than the average man spends talking and socialising.

Also read: How a manufacturing boom could help India close the gender gap

Working in a formal job or self-employment is the most dominant non-sleep activity for men, taking up an average of 4.6 hours (rural) and 5.3 hours (urban) in a day. This is followed by activities related to leisure and socialising. Among women, tasks related to preparing and serving meals are the lengthiest, covering 2.7 hours a day, while employment takes up just over an hour on average.

 

Note that the average ‘time spent’ reported here covers all individuals, including those who do not engage in the said activity at all. If they are excluded, the average time spent will be higher. However, an overall average, as we are reporting, is a combined indicator of whether – as well as how much – an individual engages in a particular activity.

This is a stark reflection of traditional gender roles. While these norms are being challenged, there has been no remarkable change to the dynamics. This is reflected in India’s low female labour participation rate of 41.7% for those aged 15 years and above in 2024-25, as against 78.8% for men. There is enough evidence of women facing gender-related barriers, low pay and supply-side constraints in finding or remaining in the right job.

Women’s ‘double shift’ at work

Women have made great strides in education and breaking gender barriers, but haven't benefited much from this, it seems.

If traditional gender roles require men to go to work and women to tend to the home, then the total time spent on both tasks—paid work and unpaid work—could be a useful measure of equality at home.

But combining both paid and unpaid work, women still outdo men in terms of time spent working, regardless of education level or socio-economic status.

Let’s take education first. Uneducated women, on average, spend a little over 103 minutes a day on employment and related activities, and 281 minutes on unpaid work. Women with at least a graduate degree spend 106 minutes on employment, and a much higher 323 minutes on unpaid work.

Also read: Why business schools hold the key to bridging the gender gap

In both cases, they surpass men’s average total time on paid and unpaid activities by 24-36 minutes, suggesting that even though women play a smaller role in the formal job market, they do more work overall.

The trend is similar across classes: women from the top 20% quintile in terms of consumption expenditure spend more hours on average on paid work, and get little leeway on unpaid work.

Women across classes spend about 280 minutes a day on unpaid labour, while men across classes spend about 35-40 minutes on it. The minuscule amount of time men spend on unpaid labour reduces their overall time spent on work, despite their formal work taking up to five hours on average.

While girls and women have better enrolment ratios than boys and men at several education levels, it’s clear that they play a smaller role in the job market. Many economists and policymakers have argued that the burden of household activities often keeps them out of the formal job market. Claudia Goldin, the 2023 Nobel laureate, showed in her paper studying 200 years of US job market data that it was the burden of unpaid work, particularly motherhood, that had led to gender differences in the labour market.

She also noted that the availability of contraceptive pills and the emergence of service sector jobs had played a positive role in countering these realities. Progress in India, however, has been slow.

Also read | Elusive gender diversity: PSUs the biggest culprits

Shuja Asrar contributed to this story.

The next part of this series will explore how marriage affects the lives of Indian women and men differently.