New survey reveals link between unpaid care work and violence against women & girls in India

Oxfam report notes that more than 40% women were beaten for failing to prepare meals, fetch water or firewood, while more than 65 per cent were harshly criticised.

Representational image | Wikimedia Commons

New Delhi: The National Sample Survey Office’s latest time-use survey 2019-20, released in early October, revealed that women in India spend 238 minutes, roughly four hours, more on “unpaid activities” than men do.

Now, a new survey released Wednesday by Oxfam India has revealed a tangible link between “unpaid care work and violence against women and girls”.

Titled Unpaid Care Work and Violence Against Women and Girls at a Crossroads: A Case for Behaviour Change of Dominant Social Norms, the survey notes that “in households where men and women express greater acceptability of beating women, women there spend 42 minutes longer on paid and unpaid care work and 48 minutes less on leisure activities”.

Since the unpaid work women do is hardly ever “valued as productive formal labour that brings in income” and therefore, “ their needs and rights go unnoticed”, the inequality manifests itself in “extreme forms of income and time poverty affecting their health and emotional well-being and circumscribing their aspirations for education and paid work,” the report notes.

Breaking down all that encompasses unpaid care work (UCW), the report notes that 42.2 per cent women were beaten for failing to fetch water or firewood for the family, while 64.7 per cent were harshly criticised. It said 41.2 per cent were beaten for failing to prepare meals, while 67.9 per cent were rebuked.

The report also notes that half of the women interviewed didn’t think men should help with UCW as it is women’s ‘primary responsibility’.

Fear of sexual harassment major reason for low participation

Whether in rural or urban areas, UCW has been recorded as a trigger for violence against women. So why don’t women participate in paid employment as a way out? While causes for this are multiple, all primarily stem from fear of sexual harassment, which is heightened by a lack of safe public transport.

Oxfam’s report states that according to a 2018 report by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, “40 per cent of 15 to 18-year-old-girls were out of school”, and 65 per cent of them were engaged in household work.

According to the 2011 census, female literacy stood at 48.4 per cent in Udaipur and 94.3 per cent in Delhi — the two areas surveyed for this report. Udaipur was selected for its “strong patriarchal culture, high levels of illiteracy and reasonable representation of traditionally marginalized communities such as Tribals (Scheduled Tribes), Dalits (Scheduled Castes) and Muslims”. In Delhi, both middle-class and upper middle-class families were surveyed.

The findings of that survey also underline a key social norm — that of stigmatising a sexual assault/domestic violence survivor. While a majority of the women interviewed in rural and urban Udaipur said they had “never faced sexual harassment on the way to the workplace and at the workplace”, they also admitted that a chief reason for low participation was the fear of sexual harassment. Women hesitate to share instances of harassment for fear of “accepting guilt” and drawing stigma, the report notes.

Women in paid employment better for GDP

The Oxfam study notes that if as many Indian women as Chinese were participating in paid employment, India’s GDP could have grown at 27 per cent, and if that participation rate was similar to that of Indian men, India’s GDP could grow at 43 per cent.

With the world’s lowest female contribution to GDP in the world — at 17 per cent — it has been recognised by economists that UCW is a factor in India’s “falling female labour force participation (FLFP)”.

The report concludes by recommending certain changes such as public amenities and services for “women to realise their rights to rest, leisure, and equal participation in the labour market.” It also calls for an increase in “decent local employment, better working conditions and fair pay” as well as the implementation of “the ICLS 2013 definition of ‘work’ and [including] women’s unpaid care work in national accounting mechanisms”.