Globally, women spend significant time on unpaid care work, limiting their participation in the labour market and affecting economic stability

In the early 60s when Canadian short story writer, Alice Munro, who died recently, earned some success, a newspaper ran a piece on her, which had a condescending headline the ‘housewife who finds time to write short stories’. The banter fell through Alice and she went on to win a Nobel in literature in 2013. While another Nobel winner in Economics in 2023, Claudia Goldin, explained in her research that a woman’s vocation is not always guided by her choice, but, more often by the ‘long-standing societal trends’, which build a ‘cult of domesticity’ around her, idealising her role as an unpaid caregiver.

Not surprising that women spend almost 76.2 per cent of total hours, three times more than men, on unpaid care work (ILO). Of all regions, the Pacific and Asia present the worst scenario, with men performing the lowest share of unpaid care work (1 hour and 4 minutes). In 2018, 606 million working-age women expressed disappointment that they failed to enter the labour market because of the burden of unpaid care work, which was the case for only 41 million men.

In terms of monetary value, women’s unpaid work may exceed up to 40 per cent of GDP in some countries (ILO).Social scientists contend that child-bearing, as well as the age and number of children, more than marriage, impede women’s entry into the labour market.

Women (aged 25-54) face a wide disparity in labour force participation rate (LFPR), which remains only 61.4 per cent, as against men’s 90.6 per cent (World Bank, 2022). While, in the lone women households, with at least one child under 6, economic compulsion lifts women’s LFPR to about 65.8 per cent, but, it goes down to 48.7 per cent, when mothers live with a partner and a young child, as the ‘male breadwinner’ syndrome prevails (UNWomen).

Notwithstanding, the ‘breadwinner moms’ also bear a heavier load at home, even if they out-earn their husbands’ ( Pew Research Centre). While, the ‘motherhood penalty’ is very much persistent in the USA (Harvard, 23). ‘Moms were six times less likely than non-mothers and 3.35 times less likely than child-free men to be recommended for a hire…and are 114 per cent more likely than dads to take a career pause(Mom Project, US, a career-resource platform for working mothers). ‘If a kid is sick,….. it’s going to be the woman to take time off, because they are paid less, which makes more economic sense’ (PNAS, 2023).

While, a report by the British trade union association TUC, said that ‘men do not face a penalty as parents at all, rather, fathers who work full time, experience a wage bonus, when they have children, earning 22 per cent more’. ‘The disparity arises not because mothers actually become less productive employees, or fathers work harder becoming parents, but, because employers expect them to be so, indicating a clear-cut culture bias about gender and work’, said Michelle Budig, a sociology professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Her research further revealed that on average, men’s earnings increased by more than 6 per cent when they had children, if they lived with them, while, women’s decreased by 4 per cent for each child they had (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, US, 1979 to 2006).

In India, childbirth impacts women’s entry into the labour market, but, differently, in the context of urban and rural. A study, collecting the Life History Calendar(LHC) data from the States of Karnataka and Rajasthan, suggested that motherhood may not be accompanied by a penalty in terms of labour market participation for rural women because of the predominance of informal and flexible employment, which are more conducive for childcare responsibilities than work in an urban or more formalised setting(Gautham 2021). The analysis of data from the Employment-Unemployment Schedule (EUS) of the NSS from 2004 to 2012 revealed that rural motherhood wage penalties are close to zero, whereas, urban women pay a large penalty of about 18 per cent of total wages and highly educated women, or women in regular or salaried wage work, incur a larger wage penalty after motherhood than their less educated or casual wage counterparts(Wilde et al. 2010). However, first-time fathers, both rural and urban, experience no negative wage effects following the birth of children.

The lack of childcare facilities is one of the most significant impediments to gender equality in job markets (UNWomen). A macro-econometric analysis of childcare policies in 18 OECD countries (1980-2007) commented that measures like high levels of employment protection and longer paid leave are crucial for the survival of working mothers (Thévenon, 2013). In 2016, an analytical study (ITUC) in seven high-income OECD countries, appraised that an investment of two per cent of GDP in the care industry, could create nearly 13 million new jobs in the US, 3.5 million in Japan, nearly 2 million in Germany, 1.5 million in the UK, 1 million in Italy, 600,000 in Australia and nearly 120,000 in Denmark and boost women’s employment rate by 3.3 to 8.2 percentage points, as against men’s 1.4 to 4.0 percentage points.

Subsequently, similar research (ITUC) in emerging economies such as Brazil, Costa Rica, China (People’s Republic), India, Indonesia and South Africa, also substantiated that the same amount of investment in the health and care sector would bolster nearly 24 million new jobs would in China, 11 million in India, nearly 2.8 million in Indonesia, 4.2 million in Brazil and over 400,000 in South Africa and 63,000 in Costa Rica.

While, the ILO’s recent global ‘Care at Work’ report exhorted that to reducing the gender gap in employment by 7 percentage points and the monthly earnings gap to 1.8 per cent by 2035, a sustainable annual investment of over $204 billion, an average of 5.8 per cent of GDP per country, should be invested for universal childcare and long-term care services. While, feminist economists (Elson et al.) and proponents of the Purple Economy (Ilkkaracan), vouched for recognising care as ‘an indispensable component of human well-being’ and called for a ‘caring and gender equal economic and social order’, by sharing caregiving responsibilities between the State and households and women and men.

It is high time now that the world fulfils its SDG 2030 commitments and ensures women’s economic justice and equality, with appropriate policy formulations and resource allocations.

(The author is former Director General, Doordarshan & All India Radio, views are personal)