Skip to main content

Official Indian data don't reflect unpaid drudgery by women; result is poor gender budgeting: Economists

Contesting data on poor work rate participation (WRP) among women data, as calculated by the Government of India, well-known Gujarat-based economist Indira Hirway, has said that, if calculated on the basis of latest methodology, men spend 27 per cent, while women spend 38 per cent of their time on work.
Revealing this in a book, “Mainstreaming Unpaid Work: Time Use Data in Developing Policies”, published by Oxford University Press (2017), and edited by her, Prof Hirway says, the methodology, time-use survey (TUS), being adopted across the world, takes into account “unpaid work”, or the work which does not give women any direct remuneration.
The book contains 10 research articles by scholars, Indian and foreign, focusing on continued gender discrimination in data collection, whether it is Latin America, Africa or Asia-Pacific.  
TUS, according to Prof Hirway, includes unpaid work that “falls within the production boundary of the System of National Accounts (SNA) as well as unpaid work that falls within the general production boundary but outside the production boundary (non-SNA)”.
While men’s share in SNA work is 67.89 per cent (in total person hours), it is 32.11 per cent for women, Prof Hirway, heads the Centre for Development Alternatives (CFDA), Ahmedabad, says, but adds, in non-SNA activities like free “collection of water, fuel wood, vegetables, fruits, and leaves) for meeting basic needs of the household”, women's share in India (both rural and urban) is 35.56 per cent, as against just 5 per cent of men.
“The total time spent on these activities also is much longer (3.11 hours per week) for participant women than for participant men (0.97 hours per week)”, calculates Prof Hirway, adding, “7.23 per cent of men and 9.27 per cent of women participate in some additional activities” like “animal grazing, making cow dung, collecting, storing, and stocking of fruits, woodcutting, and stocking of firewood.”
Terming all of it unpaid drudgery, Prof Hirway further says, “Women, on an aver­age, spend 28.96 hours per week on household management, that is, taking care of the household”, which includes cooking (14.59 hours), cleaning and washing (7.89 hours), care of textiles (2.31 hours), childcare and care of the old, sick, or disabled in the household (4.47 hours).
In yet another research paper on India in the book, “Integrating Time Use in Gender Budgeting”, Lekha Chakraborty points to how the country’s gender budgeting policies often rest on a highly restricted assumption that “all public expenditure cannot be gender partitioned.”
Senior economist at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), an autonomous research institute of the Union Ministry of Finance, Prof Chakraborty says, TUS surveys indicate that “the value of unpaid activities could be as much as 26 to 28 per cent of the relevant state domestic product (SDP).”
“Compared to women, the valuation of unpaid activities by men was limited to only about 2–3 per cent of the SDP in these two states”, Chakroborty notes, adding, “The unpaid work, as a proportion of SDP, is as high as 49.93 per cent in Meghalaya and 47 per cent in Madhya Pradesh.”
She states, “The time-use statistics revealed that public expenditure on water schemes benefit women greater than men”, adding, “Applying the population proportion of time budget data, the benefit incidence of water expenditure is estimated. The figures clearly show that women benefit more from public expenditure on water.”
“If gender budgeting is predominantly based on the index-based gender diagnosis, a reanalysis of the construction of the gender (inequality) index is necessary to avoid a partial capture of gender diagnosis in budget policymaking”, she insists.

Comments

TRENDING

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.  

Global NGO slams India for media clampdown during conflict, downplays Pakistan

A global civil rights group, Civicus has taken strong exception to how critical commentaries during the “recent conflict” with Pakistan were censored in India, with journalists getting “targeted”. I have no quarrel with the Civicus view, as the facts mentioned in it are all true.

Whither SCOPE? Twelve years on, Gujarat’s official English remains frozen in time

While writing my previous blog on how and why Narendra Modi went out of his way to promote English when he was Gujarat chief minister — despite opposition from people in the Sangh Parivar — I came across an interesting write-up by Aakar Patel, a well-known name among journalists and civil society circles.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members.  As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and the Civil Aviation Minister.

Remembering Vijay Rupani: A quiet BJP leader who listened beyond party lines

Late evening on June 12, a senior sociologist of Indian origin, who lives in Vienna, asked me a pointed question: Of the 241 persons who died as a result of the devastating plane crash in Ahmedabad the other day, did I know anyone? I had no hesitation in telling her: former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, whom I described to her as "one of the more sensible persons in the BJP leadership."

Why India’s renewable energy sector struggles under 2,735 compliance hurdles

Recently, during a conversation with an industry representative, I was told how easy it is to set up a startup in Singapore compared to India. This gentleman, who had recently visited Singapore, explained that one of the key reasons Indians living in the Southeast Asian nation prefer establishing startups there is because the government is “extremely supportive” when it comes to obtaining clearances. “They don’t want to shift operations to India due to the large number of bureaucratic hurdles,” he remarked.

Unchecked urbanisation, waste dumping: Study warns of 'invited disaster' as khadi floods threaten half of Surat

An action research report, “Invited Disaster: Khadi Floods in Surat City”, published by two civil rights groups, Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti and the People's Union for Civil Liberties, Surat, states that nearly half of Gujarat's top urban conglomerate—known for its concentration of textile and diamond polishing industries—is affected by the dumping of debris and solid waste, along with the release of treated and untreated sewage into the khadis (rivulets), thereby increasing the risk of flood disaster.

Guha plans book to counter Dalit, Marxist, and right-wing critics of Gandhi, recalls Modi’s 'pernicious lie' on Patel

Let me first confess: writing about an event three weeks after it has taken place is no good, especially for a newsperson. However, ever since I attended the public lecture by well-known historian Ramachandra Guha on May 18, organised by Sarthak Prakashan for the release of the Gujarati edition of his book monumental book "India After Gandhi", frankly, I kept wondering if he had said anything newsworthy apart from what had already appeared in the media ever since the book's first edition came out in 2007. Call it my inertia or whatever.

Two decades on, hunger still haunts Gujarat: Survey exposes stark gap behind poverty claims

A Niti Aayog report , released about two years ago, estimated that in Gujarat — which our powers-that-be have long considered a model state — 11.66% of people are "multidimensionally poor," a term referring to an index that seeks to estimate "multiple and simultaneous deprivations" at the household level across three macro categories: health, education, and living standards.