The hidden cost of women's work

The hidden cost of women's work

Every day, women in India spend almost five hours on housework that nobody pays them for.

Men spend about an hour and a half.

And India's GDP counts none of it, not a single minute.

Think about the person who wakes up first in your house, makes breakfast, packs the tiffin, and is usually the last one to leave the kitchen at night.
Nobody adds up those hours.
The government recently did.

Its Time Use Survey for 2024 tracked how Indians aged 6 and above spend their day.
Here is the gap, in minutes per day:
-> Unpaid housework: women 289, men 88
-> Caring for children and elders: women 137, men 75

That's unpaid care work Unpaid care work = cooking, cleaning and looking after family, done at home for free.

Now do the math on the housework alone.
289 minutes a day, every day of the year, adds up to roughly 1,750 hours, which is close to the hours of a full-time job.
Without a single rupee of salary.

So what is all of this work actually worth?
In 2023, SBI Research put the value of women's unpaid work at about ₹22.7 lakh crore.
That's roughly 7.5% of India's GDP GDP = the total value of everything a country produces in a year.

Ek aur baat, and this is why it stays hidden.
If a family hires a cook, her salary counts in India's GDP.
If a mother cooks the exact same meal, it counts as zero.

Same food, same hours.
One is called a job, and the other is just called "ghar ka kaam".

✍🏻 Mantra Joshi

Spotted a wrong number or something out of date? Tell me and I'll fix it.