COURTESY HT SEPT 30
Women outwork men 10 times to one when it comes to unpaid house chores: Govt report
Abhishek Jha
letters@hindustantimes.com
NEW DELHI : A first-of-its-kind National Statistical Office (NSO) report released on Tuesday puts numbers to a well known fact — that Indian women bear the brunt of household work and domestic chores.
According to the report, the average Indian woman spends 243 minutes, a little over four hours, on these, which is almost ten times the 25 minutes the average man does. Thanks to the greater burden of domestic work, men spend more time than women in every other activity — working, studying, even just taking care of themselves.
Interestingly, there seems to be an inverse relationship between age and the amount of time spent by women on household chores, but a direct one between age and the time spent by men on these. While women above the age of 60 see a sharp fall in their domestic work burden, men tend to devote a greater time to domestic work when they cross 60.
The report is based on a survey of 138,000 households in 2019 and looked at anyone over the age of six. While this may seem too young, it is a fact that, especially in poor households, and in rural India, young boys, and more often, young girls, are asked to perform chores.
An average Indian woman spends 19.5% of her time engaged in either unpaid domestic work or unpaid care-giving services, according to the survey conducted between January and December 2019. Men spend just 2.5% of a 24-hour period on these activities. In every other group of activities, men spend a higher share of their daily time than women.
In terms of participation, 81% women take on domestic chores, compared to just 26% of men. Even within domestic work, there is a gender-based division of responsibilities. Men shop, women cook and clean.