Opinion: The Double Burden — gender gap in unpaid labour

While more women are participating in paid work, this has not been accompanied by a reduction in unpaid work

By Amit Kumar, Akamsha Krishnan, Amiya Antony

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) recently released a detailed Time Use Survey 2024 report conducted between January 2024 and December 2024. This offers valuable insights for policymakers and researchers on how people spend their time at work, in the kitchen, and in other paid and unpaid activities.

The Time Use Survey follows the international classification (ICATUS 2016), categorising daily activities into nine major divisions. These include employment, learning, caregiving, household work, leisure and self-care. While the survey covers individuals aged 6 years and above, age significantly influences time use. Children and the older population have different daily activity patterns than working-age people. In this article, we focus on the working-age population, ie, from 15-59 years.

Allocating Time

Between 2019 and 2024, there have been notable shifts in how time is allocated across key daily activities for both males and females, shedding light on evolving work patterns and persistent gender disparities.

Between 2019 and 2024, participation in both paid and unpaid work increased. The proportion of people participating in paid activities has increased from 41.1% to 49.6% with a sharper increase among men (6%) as compared to females (around 4%). However, this has not translated into a more balanced domestic load.

Similarly, participation in unpaid work has also increased (from 71.2% to 72.9%). While only 51% of males participate in unpaid work, this share is remarkably high at 94.2% for females. Women now spend 21.2% of their time on unpaid work, compared to just 3.9% for men. Moreover, the gap has widened from 16.5% to 17.3% between 2019 and 2024. This highlights a continued imbalance in the distribution of unpaid responsibilities.

It is a good sign that males are participating in unpaid work, but this does not result in a decline in the participation of females. So, this growing engagement in paid work by women hasn’t reduced their unpaid responsibilities. Instead, it has deepened their burden, adding to what feminists long described as the “double burden.”

The participation in producing goods for one’s own final use, often linked with informal or subsistence-level activities, saw a marginal decline from 19.2% in 2019 to 18.8% but with important gendered implications. While male participation in these activities declined, female participation rose, suggesting that increased female workforce engagement may be driven more by necessity than opportunity. It should also be noted that only 14.1% of males participate in these activities while the share of females is much higher at 23.6%.

A Closer Look

As mentioned, the share of males and females participating in unpaid work has increased. It is essential to analyse the work both genders do within unpaid work. There are two major categories of unpaid work: unpaid caregiving services for household members and unpaid services for household members.

Childcare and instruction — the primary caregiving task — saw increased participation from 19.8% to 24.9%. Yet, the rise is mainly female-led. Women’s participation jumped from 26.6% to 32.8%, while men’s rose from 13.3% to 17%. The pandemic and remote work may have nudged more men into caregiving, but the daily average remains stark: men spend 74 minutes per day on caregiving, while women spend 140. In rural areas, this gap is even wider.

The Time Use Survey is a wake-up call: we need bold, targeted policy interventions that treat unpaid work as central to economic and social planning — not an afterthought

If we look at the unpaid services for household members, 81.5% of women participate, compared to just 27.1% of men. For men, as expected, the most common task is shopping, with participation increasing from 9.5% to 13.5%. For women, however, it’s food preparation (76.3%) and cleaning (67.1%). The male share in these chores? Just 6.2% and 6.9%, respectively — a telling indicator of the persistence of traditional gender roles which reflects the deeply embedded social norms in Indian households.

In a nutshell, while more women are participating in paid work, this has not been accompanied by a reduction in unpaid work. While paid employment is rising, so is time spent on caregiving and domestic chores. Leisure and self-care often take a back seat. Even on rest days, when men reclaim time for themselves, women continue to shoulder unpaid tasks. Further, their share is consistently increasing in subsistence activities. Within unpaid work, females still dominate childcare and instruction, food and cleaning, and gender participation keeps getting skewed.

Gender Equality

These findings reinforce the reality that although time use dynamics are evolving, the gender gap in unpaid and care work remains deeply entrenched. Without meaningful recognition of this (not so) invisible labour and a collective effort to redistribute it more equally, progress toward gender equality in the labour market will remain slow and uneven.

Ultimately, time is not just a measure of activity — it is a reflection of broader social norms and structural inequalities. The persistent gender gap in unpaid labour and limited leisure time for females pose significant barriers to achieving gender equity both within households and in the labour market.

Females consistently spend more time than males on unpaid domestic work and caregiving, with minimal improvements in male participation. This unequal burden restricts female’s ability to engage fully in paid employment, leisure and self-care. Even on rest days, when male’s time is redistributed toward leisure and personal activities, women continue to devote substantial time to unpaid responsibilities.

This imbalance limits women’s full participation in the labour market, constrains their personal well-being, and reinforces generational cycles of inequality. These patterns clearly call for policy interventions that recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid work more equitably across genders. The Time Use Survey is a wake-up call: we need bold, targeted policy interventions that treat unpaid work as central to economic and social planning — not an afterthought.

(Amit Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Economics, and Akamsha Krishnan and Amiya Antony are pursuing MSc (Economics & Analytics), Christ University, Delhi NCR)