Unpaid care work

Topic: Employment, Unemployment and Informalisation · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

Unpaid care work is the work of looking after household members (children, old people, sick people) and doing domestic chores (cooking, cleaning, fetching water and fuelwood) for one's own household, without any pay. Women do most of it, and it is excluded from GDP.

It matters because this work keeps every family and every paid worker going, yet national accounts do not count it. As a result, women's economic contribution is undercounted. The same burden also limits how much time women have for paid jobs.

Explanation

What it includes

• Caregiving: feeding and bathing children, caring for old and sick family members, and helping children with learning.
• Domestic services for own use: cooking, cleaning, washing, and fetching water and fuelwood.
• Unpaid: no wage is paid in cash or in kind. The family member does it as part of daily life.
• Care work is the wider category. It means any work that meets other people's physical, emotional and developmental needs. It has two parts:
• paid care, such as nurses, anganwadi workers and domestic workers;
• unpaid care done at home. This is the concept covered on this page.

Why GDP leaves it out

• The System of National Accounts (SNA), the global rulebook for measuring GDP, draws a line between goods and services made for the household's own use.
• Goods for own use are counted. For example, grain a family grows and eats at home is part of GDP.

• Services for own use are not counted. Cooking, cleaning and childcare for one's own family are left out.

• The "hired cook" example:

• A woman cooks for her family, and GDP does not change.
• The family hires a paid cook to do the same work, and GDP rises.

• The work is the same. Only the payment makes it "count".

• NCERT Class 11 raises the same question in its "Work This Out" box. It asks whether housewives should be counted as contributing to GNP (Gross National Product: the value of all final goods and services produced by a country's residents in a year).

How it is measured: time, not money

• It has no price, so it is measured in minutes per day through a Time Use Survey (TUS). A TUS records how people spend each part of a 24-hour day on paid work, unpaid work, learning, leisure and self-care.
• Worked example (using TUS 2024 figures, age 15–59) [2][3]:
• A woman who does unpaid caregiving spends about 140 minutes a day on it. A man who does it spends about 74 minutes.
• Gap = 140 − 74 = 66 minutes a day. So a woman caregiver gives almost twice (140 ÷ 74 ≈ 1.9 times) as much time as a man caregiver.
• Over a week, that gap is 66 × 7 = 462 minutes, or nearly 8 hours. That is about one full paid working day.

What makes the burden rise or fall

• Rises with:
• social norms that expect women to do housework first;
• poor access to water and cooking fuel, which means long hours spent fetching them;

• a lack of childcare and elder-care services.

• Falls with:

• better roads, water supply and cooking gas, which free up time;
• public childcare, such as anganwadi-cum-crèches;
• a shift of women into paid work. However, this often does not remove the housework. It creates a double burden (see below).

In India

• Measuring body: the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) runs the Time Use Survey. India's first all-India TUS was held in 2019 and the second in 2024 (January–December 2024).
• TUS 2024: share of people who did the work on a normal day [2][3]:
• Unpaid domestic services: 83.1% of females vs 26.4% of males.

• Unpaid caregiving (age 15–59): 41% of females vs 21.4% of males.

• TUS 2024: time spent by those who did it [2][3]:

• Caregiving: women about 140 minutes a day, men about 74 minutes.

• Change since 2019 [2][3]:

• Women aged 15–59 who did unpaid domestic work spent 315 minutes a day in 2019 and 305 minutes in 2024.

• MoSPI reads this as a shift from unpaid to paid activity.

• Link to labour data: the PLFS (Periodic Labour Force Survey, run by the NSSO under MoSPI since April 2017) counts only economic activity. Women doing only housework and care are recorded as "not in the labour force".

• Female LFPR (Labour Force Participation Rate, the share of women who are working or seeking work; age 15+, usual status) was only 23.3% in 2017-18. It rose to 41.7% in 2023-24 [1].

• Urban female LFPR stayed low: 20.4% → 28.0% over the same years [1]. Social norms that put housework first are one reason.

• Double burden: women do both paid work and unpaid domestic and care work. When a woman takes a job, her housework does not go away, so her total working day gets longer.

Don't confuse with

• Unpaid family helper: a person who works without a wage on the family farm or family business. This person is counted as a worker, and the output counts in GDP. Unpaid care work (cooking or childcare at home) is not counted.
• Care work / care economy: this is broader. It includes paid care (nurses, anganwadi workers, domestic workers), which is in GDP. Only the unpaid part at home is excluded.
• Own-account production of goods: goods made at home for the household's own use (such as grain grown for home) are included in GDP. Household services for own use are excluded. This is a favourite exam trap.
• Double burden: this is not the work itself. It is the result when a woman carries unpaid care work plus paid work at the same time.

Prelims Hooks

• Unpaid domestic and care services for own use are excluded from GDP under the System of National Accounts. Goods produced for own use (such as grain for home) are included.
• The Time Use Survey is run by MoSPI. The first all-India TUS was in 2019 and the second in 2024 (January–December).
• TUS 2024: 83.1% of females vs 26.4% of males did unpaid domestic services on a normal day [2][3].
• TUS 2024 (age 15–59): 41% of females vs 21.4% of males did unpaid caregiving. Women caregivers spent ~140 min/day vs men ~74 min/day [2][3].
• Women's time on unpaid domestic work (age 15–59, among those who did it) fell from 315 min/day (2019) to 305 min/day (2024) [2][3].
• Trap: a family that hires a paid cook raises GDP. The same cooking done by a family member adds nothing to GDP.

Mains Points

• Make invisible work visible: TUS 2024 shows women carry most unpaid care (140 vs 74 min/day for caregivers) [2][3].
• India could build satellite accounts (separate accounts kept beside GDP) that put a value on unpaid work, without changing the core GDP rules.

• This would give a truer picture of women's contribution. It would also help design gender budgets.

• Reduce the double burden to raise female LFPR: female LFPR rose from 23.3% (2017-18) to 41.7% (2023-24) [1], but urban women lag at 28.0% [1].

• Public childcare (anganwadi-cum-crèches), water supply and cooking gas can free women's time.

• Safe transport and flexible, part-time jobs help women move into paid work. This helps India climb the rising side of the U-shaped female participation curve.

• Care economy as a source of jobs: turning some unpaid care into paid care (crèches, elder care, nursing, anganwadi services) does three things:

• creates formal jobs, mostly for women;
• raises measured GDP;
• eases the load at home.
• Workers in these jobs need fair pay and protection under the Code on Wages, 2019, which bars gender discrimination in wages.

Related concepts

• Female labour force participation rate
• U-shaped female labour force participation
• Unpaid work of women
• Care work
• Double burden
• Feminisation of agriculture
• Gender wage gap
• Glass ceiling

Read more

• Who works: participation by gender and region, and women's invisible work