ABSTRACT
This chapter draws from primary research with women living in low-income families in four countries—India, Nepal, Rwanda, and Tanzania—as they strive to balance their various work responsibilities and make a living for themselves and their families. Specifically, it focuses on the relationship between women’s paid work and unpaid care work, to shed light on how these activities feed into women’s economic empowerment (WEE). It begins by presenting the relational dynamics of how care is organised across the study countries and the conditions affecting the intensity and drudgery of care work for women living in low-income households. Next, the types of paid work that women undertake—specifically their working conditions and the choices and trade-offs they make in order to engage in paid work—are examined. Then the efforts that women exert and the strategies they employ to balance their paid work with unpaid care work are highlighted, along with the consequences of this double burden on women, their children, and their families. The chapter concludes by unpacking the complex dynamics of the relationship between paid work and unpaid care work that underpin WEE.
