(with inputs from L. Vijay Kumar and Sanjukta Chakraborty)

Women work for at least 50 hours a week. This is our finding from a one-week labour diary or time-use survey conducted in Siresandra village of Kolar, Karnataka in May 2017. As part of a project on Women in Rural Production Systems, the Foundation for Agrarian Studies team interviewed 14 women on all the activities undertaken every day for a week. The women were between the ages of 21 and 65, and belonged to different socio-economic classes.

The activities were classified in to three groups: activities recorded as part of the (System of National Accounts (or SNA activities), extended SNA activities and non-SNA activities. SNA refers to economic activities such as agricultural labour, sericulture, care of livestock. Extended SNA refers to cooking, cleaning, child care, and other household maintenance activities, and non-SNA refers to study, recreation, personal care and sleep.

Our first finding is that, for these 14 women, SNA activities ranged from 1 to 9 hours a day, with six women spending more than five hours a day on SNA. Extended SNA activities occupied 1 to 10 hours a day. If the SNA and extended SNA activity of each woman are added, the total hours of work varied from 8 to 11 hours a day.

Women worked 52 to 77 hours of SNA and extended SNA a week. Nine women of the 14 worked more than a 60-hour week.

Of the 14 women interviewed, 4 had not been to school (they were all more than 45 years old) and the rest had 9 or more years of schooling. Women with school education did not participate in SNA activities although their day was full on account of care or extended SNA activities. None of the women in the group who worked more than 40 hours a week at SNA activity had completed even a year of schooling.

An interesting question, and one that we shall explore, is whether young, educated women in the village are withdrawing from the work force because of social and economic factors or because there are no jobs that meet their aspirations.