Women's Work Burden Research Articles

Change in women's work burden and gender norms of unpaid care work after the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdown has increased the burden of unpaid care work. Hence it is essential to evaluate the crisis response in change of women's work burden and gender norms of their unpaid care work and social status. To investigate change in women's job roles after second the wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on physical and psychological burden of work along with identification of common contributors of gendering of care work. Using a structured questionnaire and simple random sampling technique, the study was conducted on married women (n = 691) in West Bengal, India after the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Significant job loss (p = 0.014) occurred during COVID-19. Unpaid care work increased (p = 0.04) with reduction in rest hours (p = 0.002). 62.3% women felt increased burden of work. Work burden score increased with age (p = 0.003), reduction of rest (p < 0.001) and increased care work (p = 0.022). Gendering occurred due to male partner's less contribution to care work and respondents' cognitive agreement with expected gender role. Gendering of work is less in urban areas (OR = 0.379, p = 0.008) and higher income group (OR = 5.37, p = 0.026). Women faced more gendering in case of job loss (OR = 9.27, p = 0.001) or if burdened with work (OR = 3.92, P < 0.001). The impact of employability of women on their work role during the COVID-19 outbreak has highlighted both theoretical and practical significance that opens up the scope of further studies at national and larger ethno-geographic levels.

The effect of affordable daycare on women's mental health: Evidence from a cluster randomized trial in rural India

Access to affordable daycare might improve population mental health. However, evidence is sparse and restricted to middle- and high-income country settings. We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial in one low-income setting, rural Rajasthan, India. Communities lacking daycare facilities were identified (n = 160) and randomly selected for assistance in setting up a community-based daycare program (n = 80) or not (n = 80). Women eligible for the daycare program living in these communities completed structured interviews before the intervention (participation rate = 89%) and approximately one year after rollout of the intervention (participation rate = 96%), resulting in a final analytic sample of 3041. Mental distress was measured with the Hindi version of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (score range: 0–12). We modeled the relation between access to daycare and number of mental distress symptoms (GHQ-12 score) with negative binomial regression using an intention-to-treat approach, which groups women according to if they lived in communities randomized to affordable daycare. We also evaluated the effect of access to daycare on secondary outcomes that may be related to mental distress, including women's work burden, agency, and intimate partner violence (IPV). We found that access to daycare resulted in modest reductions in symptoms of mental distress (mean difference = 0.21, 95% CI: −0.43, 0.02). We found some evidence that daycare reduced IPV, but virtually no change in women's work burden or agency. Our results provide some indication that access to affordable daycare might be one policy lever to improve population mental health.

Women Farmers’ (Dis)Empowerment Compared to Men Farmers in Ethiopia

In Sub‐Saharan Africa, women's farm labor is highest in Ethiopia. Using focus group discussions with 240 farmers and other research tools, our USAID‐funded Feed the Future Innovation for the Reduction of Post‐Harvest Loss—Ethiopia study explores the sources of (dis)empowerment of rural farmers in Ethiopia. We find that women are disempowered across all five domains of empowerment due to cultural factors, despite government and financial institution policy changes. Women with low education tend to engage in low risk/return farming practices, including growing less nutritious crops, thereby undermining nutritional security of the household. Our findings confirm that women's role increases to as much as 80 percent in post‐harvest. Poor storage technologies resulting in fungal/pest infections and chemicals in stored grains pose serious health risks for women, and poor women consume grains with up to 50 percent damage. Food security and development policies should empower women and promote improved technologies—particularly targeting women—to reduce grain losses and women's work burden while mitigating health risks.

Deforestation and Women’s Work Burden in the Eastern Himalayas, India: Insights from a Field Survey

The effects of environmental degradation on livelihoods are significant in many parts of the developing world. This article attempts to quantify the impact of deforestation on women’s work burden in the eastern Himalayas through a primary survey in three villages of Arunachal Pradesh, a state in India. Our findings suggest that although deforestation increases women’s work in forest-related collection and gathering activities, the net impacts are also mediated through processes of commercialization of the subsistence economy. While women share a disproportionately higher work burden in terms of the time spent in collection and processing of forest products, commercialization of some products has also resulted in higher participation of men in collection, marketing, and transport activities. It was found that the quality of village forest is a strong factor in reducing women’s total work burden. Forest degradation increases the work burden of women, as does the distance of agricultural land from house, and dependence on shifting cultivation.

Export-Oriented Policies, Women's Work Burden and Human Development in Mauritius**

This article attempts to understand how the feminisation of the labour force triggered by export-oriented policies has affected women's work burden in Mauritius. The article explores factors influencing women's labour supply (measured as hours worked in the productive economy) and women's hours of housework, and it further analyses how work burden experiences vary between women of different social backgrounds. The analysis is based on the use of mixed methods consisting of a quantitative survey in the industrial sector and a qualitative survey in the industrial and services sectors. The results show, among other things, that women and the social reproductive process are not only affected differently depending on women's socio-economic background, but also depending on a complex mixture of different socio-economic processes.

Gender, forests and livelihoods: A note on the political economy of transition in north-east India

The process of livelihood diversification could be highly complex and conflict-ridden, particularly because of unequal access to crucial livelihood resources. Based on mountain regions of north-east India in general and Arunachal Pradesh in particular, this paper attempts to analyse the livelihoods diversification in a forest-dependent economy. Along with the manifold transformation of the economies in the region, gender relations have also been altered in a diverse and complex manner. This is primarily because gender relations are deeply embedded in the economy and the politics of control over resources-a dimension which is often neglected in the mainstream discussions on economic development and change. Largely drawing upon micro-studies by the author and others, these interconnections have been examined in relation to few critical issues. They include the changing nature of ownership and control over forests having significant gendered implications. As forest products get commercialized, the way forests and forest-related activities are viewed by the forest dependent population also change. The shift from family and community labour to wage labour for extraction of forest products for market use as well as the interdependencies between farming and forest related activities alters the intra-family distribution of work as well as opportunities for men and women. Finally, the paper also take into account the impact of deforestation and commercialisation of forest products on women's work burden.

Farm Commercialization and Nutritional Status of Children: The Case of the Vegetables, Fruits, and Cash Crops Programme in Western Nepal

There are two conflicting views regarding the effects of commercialization of subsistence agriculture on health and nutrition. While the proponents of agricultural commercialization argue that commercialization raises income, increases food availability, and improves the health and nutritional status of rural households, the critics claim that shifting resources from subsistence to commercial crops reduces food security and increases women's work burden, thereby affecting the health and nutrition of farm families, especially that of women and children. the literature also fails to provide clear evidence whether the commercialization of subsistence agriculture results in an improvement or a deterioration in health and nutrition. This paper examines the effects of farmers’ participation in a USAID-sponsored vegetables, fruits, and cash crops (VFC) programme on the nutritional status of children in western Nepal. According to a simple dichotomous comparison between the participating and non-participating households, the VFC programme had a positive impact on the nutritional status of children, especially in terms of standardized weight-for-age and weight-for-height measures. However, according to multivariate regression analysis, the VFC programme did not have a notable impact on children's nutritional status. the results suggest that household demographics, the nutrition and demographics of mothers, individual child demographics, and a complex set of other unknown factors play a greater role in children's nutritional performance than household economic strategies.