More mothers with young children could opt for paid work if they found reliable alternative caregivers to take care of family-related responsibilities, a survey in Rajasthan’s Udaipur district shows. The baseline survey of 3,177 mothers with children in the 1-6 years age group has found that on average the respondents spent 9.4 hours each day doing some kind of unpaid work as against 17 minutes per day doing paid work. The 2016 Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum found that women in India spent on average 350 minutes per day doing unpaid work, while men spent 50. Since women spend a large portion of their time doing unpaid work, particularly unpaid care work, could they participate more in economic activities if they had alternative caregivers (ACGs) in the household? The presence of an additional ACG increased the likelihood of a woman going out for paid or unpaid work by 1.1 percentage points.

Source: Hindustan Times August 07, 2017 04:41 UTC