ABSTRACT
Most women, even and especially those classified as ‘non-workers’, are engaged in
these activities, which are clearly economic activities even when they are not socially rec-
ognised as such. It is also clear from the NSS surveys that the greater proportion of
women who engage in these tasks do so because ‘there is no one else to do this for the
household’, which suggests that the requirement to engage in such unpaid domestic
labour can constrain the possibility of women engaging in outside work for remuneration.
It is clear that in addition to broader socio-economic processes, state action has a critical
role to play in affecting the extent to which such unpaid work is required. The lack of
basic infrastructure and amenities, such as piped water or cooking fuel, obviously adds to
the time required to procure or collect fuel wood or water for household use. The lack of
social provision of care services including medical care increases the burden of care work
that falls on household members. And so on.
