Unpaid Family Labor Research Articles

On the Interplay Between Duration of Employment, Relational Quality and Wages—Results About Non-Family Farm Workers in Switzerland

Our knowledge on non-family farm workers has been hampered by a lack of reliable and relevant data. This study tackled this problem by asking Swiss managers of fruit, wine and vegetable farms about their employees. Using a dataset of 921 employees, we explain the duration of the labour contract, the level of wages and the relational quality between employers and workers. The level of wages and other resources like shelter are linked to employment duration but also to social factors like joint social events or the perception of relational quality by employers. Workers with the liberty to allocate their labour time have better relationships with their employers. The best wages are paid to full-time male employees with agricultural education residing in Switzerland. The fact that Swiss citizens receive a significant reduction in their payment compared to foreigners may point to a grey zone between unpaid family labour and market-based employment relations.

Examining the Societal Impact on Women Involved in Income Generation

Nepal has taken significant steps towards gender equality in recent years and has a relatively high percentage of women participating in the labor force. However, a study has found that a large number of economically active women in Nepal do not have access to economic resources, with three-quarters of the unpaid family labor force being women. This study aims to examine how societal factors influence women’s participation on income-generating activities and identify with a sample of 50 women selected from Kathmandu valley through a convenience sampling technique. The data were collected through survey methods using questionnaires. Data analysis was done using "SPSS" and Ms-Excel software, with correlation and regression analyses being conducted to determine the relationship between variables and the percentage change in one variable due to the change in another variable. The study concludes that societal factors have a positive impact on women’s involvement in income-generating activities in the Kathmandu area. The R and R square were .83 and .68, respectively. The research offers insights into the transformation of societal attitudes and norms. It enriches the academic discourse by supplying empirical data on how societal influences affect women’s economic engagement, contextualized within a distinct cultural and geographical setting.

Agroecology as a means to improve energy metabolism and economic management in smallholder cocoa farmers in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Cocoa is one of the most important crops in Ecuador, especially in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where >60,000 ha are dedicated to cocoa; 48,600 ha in production in 2021. Most of the cocoa area (82 %) is managed by smallholders with <10 ha under cultivation. Despite the socioeconomic and environmental importance of these systems, there are no previous studies that provide an integrated view of the energy metabolism and economic viability of different smallholder management styles. Consequently, the objective of this work is twofold: a) to estimate the aggregate energy and economic metabolism of small cocoa producers (< 10 ha) in the Ecuadorian Amazon and b) to investigate the existing differences in the technical-economic management styles of the crop. To this end, primary data were collected from a statistically representative sample of cocoa-growing areas distributed among 279 producers in 86 communities in the region, using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and a cost-benefit analysis associated with management. Our data show that most smallholder farmers produce cocoa in low-input diversified agroforest system with a high share of unpaid family labor. At the Amazon level, smallholder farmers (< 10 ha) produced 16.9 million tons of food for the market with a non-renewable cumulative energy demand (NR CED) of 53.8 TJ (1343 MJ/ha), a carbon footprint (CF) of 8.16 Mt. CO2-eq. (203.9 kg CO2-eq/ha), and a net margin of 19.07 million $ (476.8 $/ha). On average, cocoa yields were estimated at 288 kg/ha, resulting in a NR CED and carbon footprint (CF) per kg of cocoa of 4.18 MJ and 0.98 kg CO2-eq. Despite its apparent homogeneity, three distinct styles of crop management were identified by a cluster analysis. The results suggest that farms with good organic/agroecological management can have a similar income generating capacity to the more intensive conventional farms evaluated, but with better environmental outcomes. Consequently, the paper finally discusses the need to promote public actions and policies that allow for the scaling up and improvement of successful agroecological management in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy: The Need for a Multi-faceted Approach.

The recent international attention paid to the formalization of the informal economy finds reflection in ILO Recommendation No. 204 concerning the transition from the informal to the formal economy and the Sustainable Development Goals (Target 8.3). There is great diversity within the categories of the informal sector, informal employment, and informal economy in India. This paper examines the category of the ‘informal economy’ as understood in international instruments as well as in international statistics and maps these onto legal categories recognized within Indian law. The categories of ‘employed’, ‘engaged’, and ‘work arrangement’ used in Indian laws, and their interpretation by the courts, are useful to understand the links between the concepts of work, employment, and livelihoods. The paper also focuses on the diversity of the informal economy, focusing on wage employment, self-employment, including the diverse forms of own-account work and contributing (unpaid) family labour. The categorization of gig and platform workers as own-account or waged workers continues to pose a normative challenge. The regulatory responses for formalization of each segmented category of informal workers and informal enterprises cannot be uniform, and neither do they need to be linked to any particular domain of the law. Moving beyond the extension of social security coverage as the key vehicle for formalization, the paper suggests various entry points through which law and policy can improve conditions of work and protect the livelihood of those in the informal economy as measures to achieve formalization.

Declining Women Work Participation in Rural India: Trends, Causes and Policy Implications

One of the major policy concerns in recent years has been decline in the number of women workers in the Indian labour market. The ‘education’ and ‘income’ effect hypotheses for such decline are generally advocated. Such analyses, however, are limited in their focus. This study attempts to fill up this gap by exclusively focusing on rural women. Using the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data for the years 2004–2005 and 2011–2012 and Periodic Labour Force Survey data for the year 2017–2018, it observes a widespread decline in rural women’s work participation rates (WPRs) across their different social groups, income strata and states in the country albeit at a significantly varying rate. While the major decline in women WPRs in the age-group, 15–24 years has been in favour of education, it has been largely in favour of ‘domestic works’ in the other age-groups. The major decline in women workforce is observed in case of those as not-literates, ‘unpaid family labour’ in agriculture and ‘casual wage labour’ both in farm and non-farm sectors. This is largely due to contraction in self-employment and casual wage works both in farm and non-farm sectors, more so during recent period. This study finds a positive impact of rising household income on women’s WPRs. While education emerges as a significant predictor of women joining workforce, its iteration with their social groups shows differing impact of similar level of education on different caste groups. It offers inputs for policy measures to be aimed at providing decent livelihoods in rural areas in a big scale, with strong focus on reducing caste and gender disparities. JEL Codes: E24, J16, J21, J18

Estimating the Nonfatal Injury Undercount in Agriculture from 2004 to 2019

HighlightsGovernment estimates of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses understate the hazards in U.S. agriculture.From 2004 to 2019, government estimates only captured 13% to 26% of the true number of nonfatal injuries.Estimates of nonfatal injuries are more accurate for crop production than for animal production.Estimates are more accurate over time, with a decline in self-employed and unpaid family labor in agriculture.Abstract. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provides annual estimates of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses by U.S. industry sector. We performed a series of corrections to these estimates for each year from 2004 through 2019 to account for institutional and behavioral drivers of the undercount in the sample used to construct these estimates for the U.S. agricultural industry. Institutional factors consisted of the exclusion of small farms and self-employed and family workers, as well as the employment undercount due to the highly seasonal nature of agricultural work. Behavioral factors consisted of willful and negligent underreporting by employers. We updated the estimates using information on the number of people employed in the excluded portions of the agricultural industry and estimates of the underreporting rate from prior work. Over this period, we show that the government estimates only captured 13% to 26% of the true number of nonfatal injuries and illnesses, missing 74% to 87% of the true case counts each year. The government estimates were more accurate for crop production, missing an average of 77% of cases, than for animal production, missing an average of 83% of cases. Willful and negligent underreporting was the largest contributor to the undercount, followed by the exclusion of self-employed and unpaid family workers. Keywords: Agriculture, Nonfatal injuries and illnesses, Occupational injuries, Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, Undercount.

Changing with the weather: Afghan farmers adapt to drought

Drought is one of the significant impacts of climate change affecting agricultural productivity and subsistence for Afghanistan’s farmers. Producers have applied various adaptation measures making use of their native resources in response to drought. Studying the cases of the Panjab and Waras districts in the south of Bamyan province of Afghanistan, this research aims to analyse Afghan farmers’ drought adaptation strategies. Farmers’ adaptation strategies to drought and the effectiveness of such actions to decrease the effects of this natural hazard were studied. The adaptive strategies were categorised into five groups, including: (i) cropping practices, (ii) soil and water conservation, (iii) animal husbandry management, (iv) wage labour use and (v) financial management. Major adaptive strategies for cropping practices include growing early maturing crops, drought-tolerant crops, inter-cultivation systems, changing cropping patterns, seed treatments, growing non-traditional crops and crop rotation. Soil and water conservation adaptive actions include bund construction, watering at night, levelling land, decreasing irrigated areas, reducing water wastage and small-scale watershed management. Drought responses for livestock included supplementary feed, increased rearing of small animals, fodder cultivation and storage. Non-farm adaptive strategies to augment income include production of handicrafts, additional unpaid family labour, borrowing money, reducing expenditures for non-food and costly food items, migration, selling assets and discontinuing agricultural activities due to drought. Data for this study was collected using a field survey with questionnaires and face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 140 farmers from Panjab and Waras districts in the study area. One of the main issues was the necessity and importance of expanding the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) support programmes for the adaptation strategies.

Impact of COVID-19 on Women’s Lives in India: Interventions by Civil Society Organisations

Women contribute to the economy through their undervalued and unpaid work. This involves hours of drudgery and hardship, especially for poor women, whose work involves not only household chores, but also as unpaid family labour in agricultural and other domestic work. Women have become the safety net for ensuring the wellbeing of the family during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ‘work from home’ policy increased the burden on poor women. The announcement of the sudden lockdown severely impacted the lives of women. The article examines the impact of the lockdown on women and their work, role of unions, and some of the civil society interventions.

Impact of COVID-19 on Women’s Lives in India: Interventions by Civil Society Organisations

Women contribute to the economy through their undervalued and unpaid work. This involves hours of drudgery and hardship, especially for poor women, whose work involves not only household chores, but also as unpaid family labour in agricultural and other domestic work. Women have become the safety net for ensuring the wellbeing of the family during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ‘work from home’ policy increased the burden on poor women. The announcement of the sudden lockdown severely impacted the lives of women. The article examines the impact of the lockdown on women and their work, role of unions, and some of the civil society interventions.

Gendered property and labour relations in agriculture: implications for social change in Turkey

ABSTRACT By investigating the implications of gendered property and labour relations in agriculture for socio-economic transformation, this article extends development theories and contributes to feminist analysis of unpaid family labour. Drawing on the case of Turkey, it demonstrates that gendered patterns of agriculture limit women’s mobility, access to education, and paid employment in non-agricultural sectors. Using the qualitative and quantitative methods, the paper finds that patriarchal property and labour relations prevent the movement of labour from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors, constrain labour supply, and increase subsistence earnings thereby putting upward pressure on urban wages.

The Economic Cost of Tobacco Farming in Bangladesh

The extent of tobacco cultivation remains substantially high in Bangladesh, which is the 12th largest tobacco producer in the world. Using data from a household survey of current, former, and never tobacco farmers, based on a multi-stage stratified sampling design with a mix of purposive and random sampling of households, this study estimated the financial and economic profitability per acre of land used for tobacco cultivation. The environmental effects of tobacco cultivation on land and water resources were estimated using laboratory tests of sample water and soil collected from tobacco-cultivating and non-tobacco cultivating areas. The study finds that tobacco cultivation turns into a losing concern when the opportunity costs of unpaid family labour and other owned resources, and the health effects of tobacco cultivation are included. Tobacco cultivation poses a significantly high environmental cost that causes a net loss to society. Nevertheless, the availability of unpaid family labour and the options of advanced credit as well as a buy back guarantee from the tobacco companies attract farmers to engage in and continue tobacco cultivation. Therefore, supply side interventions to curb the tobacco epidemic in Bangladesh need to address major drivers of tobacco cultivation to correct the wrong incentives and motivate tobacco farmers to switch to alternative livelihood options.

Labour, nature, and exploitation: Social metabolism and inequality in a farming community in mid‐19th century Catalonia

AbstractExploiting the labour of other people has historically been one of the main strategies to tackle the biophysical tension that always exists between the satisfaction of human needs and the labour required to fulfil them. Based on the insights of ecological, feminist, and Marxist economics, we disentangle the exploitation of the labour of women and labouring poor through a novel methodology that integrates energy, material, time, and cash balances. We apply it to the sociometabolic flows between household units endowed with different land and livestock resources in a traditional rural community in Catalonia (Spain) in the mid‐19th century. The results show that land and livestock hoarding led to a process of accumulation through dispossession that increased the exploitative relationships through the labour market, which in turn relied on the patriarchal division of labour between men and women at home. Our estimates of energy labour surplus reveal that male wages represented 88% of the equivalent consumption basket that would have been obtained by carrying out the same amount of labour on land of one's own. However, in the case of female wages, the percentage was 54%. This shows that wage labour incorporated a significant amount of unpaid domestic family labour.

Contribution of the Unpaid Family Labour in the Handloom Sector of Textile Industry in West Bengal

The so-called labour force survey or employment and unemployment survey or census does not account for the unpaid works which are mainly performed by the women. Here is an attempt to access the women’s unpaid work within the production realm; the extent of their contribution in the productivity sector in terms of both money and time where the works they perform remains unnoticed. The result shows that unpaid female labour are contributing a commendable share to the total income generated from the handloom sector in the family (in terms of money). 26% of unpaid female labour contribute more than 50% to the total income generated from the handloom sector, while percentage point of male for this is 16. Time allocation differs by gender in paid and unpaid work. Using the Lorenz curve, male and female relative inequality in spending time within each group has been found. Women form a more heterogeneous group when time spent in paid activity is considered. The Gini coefficient for this group is 0.6, while for male it is 0.12. The graph shows that 50% of women allocate 10% of their total time for paid works, whereas this share of time in unpaid work is about 35%. The Lorenz curve shows the share of total time spent in each activity accumulated up to certain share of population. Regression analysis confirms that male members of the family have more likelihood to be in main weaving activities which are often marked as paid job and females are engaged themselves in the allied works of weaving which are often not remunerated properly or remain unpaid.

Beyond Separate Spheres

Beyond Separate Spheres

The Cost of Being Faithful: What Do Farmers Give Up to Keep the Sabbath?

Judeo-Christian beliefs and tradition include observing a Sabbath, or day of rest, by abstaining from work one day each week. In modern times, followers of the Jewish faith mark the Sabbath from Friday evening to Saturday evening and Christians do so on Sunday. For both groups, this practice is firmly entrenched to the point that many would contend that working on Sunday is morally wrong. For many Christian workers in the United States, this practice often fits with their work schedule as Saturday and Sunday are typical days off for many schools, government organizations, and businesses. There are exceptions to this and farmers are one of the most obvious. The demands of managing a farm do not conform to uniform weekly work schedules. To meet labor requirements, many American family farms rely upon unpaid family labor to perform farm tasks such as conducting field operations. Reliance on unpaid labor is becoming more prevalent due to lack of available unskilled laborers in many locations in the United States.

Globalisation and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Labour Market in India

This paper examines quantitative and qualitative dimensions of employment issues in India from gender lens. Inequality in quantitative aspects have been analysed gender gap in work participation, composition and structure of employment. The study finds that female work participation in India has declined sharply despite faster economic growth and improvement in female literacy outcomes. The magnitude of decline is sharper in case of illiterate, women from less privileged class and rural backgrounds. Similarly, even after two decades of economic reform, female workers are highly concentrated in low productive, less remunerative and unpaid family labour category of self employment activities. Considering the qualitative dimension of jobs, the paper finds that the condition of female workers are more vulnerable as they are highly concentrated in informal sector and informal jobs with no employment security, no social security, and are being paid relatively lower wages compared to male workers in most of the sub-sector. The paper argues for an urgent policy intervention to ensure access to decent jobs and to provide protection to these vulnerably placed women workers.

Fatherhood in the Russian Provinces: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

Alexandra Lipasova – PhD student, Department of Sociology, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Email: alexandra.lipasova@gmail.com&#x0D; DOI: 10.17323/727-0634-2017-15-4-629-642&#x0D; The article explores gender contracts and fatherhood models that are present in families living in small Russian towns. Firstly, the key characteristics of the social groups in this research, 'potential middle class' and 'manual workers' are defined. This is followed by a review of two parental educational strategies: concerted cultivation and accomplishment of natural growth. Two theoretical explanations for gender imbalance in the division of unpaid family labour are offered. These are the economic/bargaining perspective and the gender perspective. Then, drawing on in-depth interviews with fathers and mothers from small Russian towns, the conclusion is reached that fathering practices in these families have situational character, defined by, in Bourdieu’s term, their 'habitus'. Many fathers still keep a 'low bar for fatherhood'. The less affluent families from Russian provinces do not rate their children’s opportunities for social mobility very highly, so they motivate them to be successful in sports, thus accomplishing a variant of the 'natural growth' educational strategy. The gender contract in these families can be characterized by distinct gender imbalance; many fathers still think that house work and childcare are a mother’s responsibility. Even the fathers who were labelled as 'involved' demonstrate rigid views on the preferred life trajectory of their daughters. It is noted that the degree of father’s involvement depends on the partners' negotiating the terms of their family gender contract. Traditional gender ideology and notions about gender inequality make parenthood the sole responsibility of mothers, and breadwinning the ultimate duty of fathers.

Cultural norms, economic incentives and women’s labour market behaviour: empirical insights from Bangladesh

This paper sets out to explore a seeming puzzle in the context of Bangladesh. There is a considerable body of evidence from the country pointing to the positive impact of paid work on women’s position within family and community. Yet, according to official statistics, not only has women’s labour force participation risen very slowly over the years, but also a sizeable majority of women in the labour force are in unpaid family labour. We draw on an original survey of over 5000 women from eight different districts in Bangladesh to explore some of the factors that lead to women’s selection into the labour force, and into different categories of labour market activity, with a view to gaining a better understanding of the combination of cultural norms and economic considerations that explain these findings.

Growing burdens? Disease-resistant genetically modified bananas and the potential gendered implications for labor in Uganda

How will the adoption of genetically modified (GM) staple crops reconfigure labor processes in Sub-Saharan Africa? This article focuses on Uganda, where GM varieties of matooke (cooking bananas), the country’s primary carbohydrate staple, are expected to be commercialized within the next few years. The paper draws on survey data and focus groups with a random sample of over one hundred and fifty growers to investigate the potential ways a variety engineered to be resistant to banana bacterial wilt (BBW) might impact labor dynamics. A BBW resistant GM variety will displace labor currently allocated to disease prevention and control, and increase the labor required for harvesting higher yields. How farmers can address the need for more harvesting labor varies significantly according to region. In the southwestern highlands, producers can increase their portion of hired labor. In the central and eastern regions, where farms tend to be smaller and subsistence-oriented, farmers are more likely to intensify their use of unpaid family labor, particularly that of wives. Hence, while GM technology may result in increased yields for small-scale farmers in Uganda, this is likely to come at the cost of intensifying the agricultural labor burdens of women in the central and eastern region.

Bringing Commodity Chain Analysis Back to Its World-Systems Roots: Rediscovering Women’s Work and Households

Globally between 1980 and 2000, women's economic activity rate expanded, narrowing the gender gap in labor force participation. Thus, females now account for one-third or more of the "officially-counted" personnel of export industries (UNICEF 2007), and export agriculture is now feminized (Deere 2005). Today women account for one-third of the manufacturing labor force in developing countries, and females hold more than one-half of the industrial jobs in Asia (Barrientos, Kabeer and Hossain 2004). In much of the global South, females account for a majority of the waged labor force in export agriculture, and they are more heavily concentrated than men in service jobs that provision the supply chains of global production. As a reflection of fewer opportunities for males, women are now less likely to withdraw from the labor force during their childbearing years. In addition, females account for a majority of the income earners in the informal sectors of a majority of global South countries, generate a significant proportion of global commodities through subcontracted work they complete in their households, and provide most of the unpaid family labor needed to support household-based farms and businesses that are dominated by males (United Nations 2003).