In this Note, I examine the time spent by women in a village on an unpaid activity that contributes to household maintenance, cooking and serving food. Though men may participate in cooking, it is women who are primarily responsible for cooking and serving food to families in rural India. The data come from time-use surveys conducted in Siresandra village, Kolar district, Karnataka, by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies. During the last agricultural year, 2017–18, the time use survey method was used to collect data over one week in each of two seasons from 12 women belonging to different socioeconomic groups in Siresandra.

My main finding is that the majority of women cook for more than two hours a day, and cooked more than three hours on at least one day during the reference week. The exceptions were three women who belonged to households in which members of the household who were not in our sample were mainly responsible for cooking.

Table 1 shows the time that each of the 12 women we surveyed spent each day on cooking.

First, during the reference week, the time spent on cooking ranged from 25 minutes a day to 331 minutes or 5 hours and 31 minutes a day. The majority — eight out of twelve women — spent more than 120 minutes or two hours each day on cooking. Only four women spent less than two hours a day cooking.

Two women spent only half an hour a day on cooking: Sia and Paro. Sia lives with her husband, son and daughter (Neha), and the daughter cooks for the family.  Paro lives with her husband, son, daughter-in-law and grandchild. Food is cooked by her daughter-in-law (who was not included in our survey) though Paro helps her sometimes. Gopa belongs to an 18-member rich peasant family, and a younger brother’s wife, Sara, was assigned the task of cooking for the household. Gopa did no cooking on some days but assisted Sara when she had the time or there were guests. In the three households that had more than one woman each, younger women generally spent more time in cooking and kitchen activities than older women, while the older woman spent more time in production activities (such as agriculture or sericulture or livestock care) than the young women. Gopa, Paro, and Sia were engaged in agriculture and livestock during the reference week.

A fourth woman who spent less than two hours on cooking was Vina, a manual worker. Her children live out of the village, and she cooks for herself. In our survey week, however, she was ill, and did not cook for two days. On the last two days of the week, her daughter came to take care of her and she helped Vina cook.

If we exclude these four women, the average time spent a day on cooking was 3.5 hours or 213 minutes.

At the other extreme, Asha and Sara spent almost five hours a day cooking. Asha lives with her husband, children, and mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law is a senior citizen who does not do household chores. Asha cooked three main meals for the family. Sara cooked for her 18-member household and for the field workers they employed.

Secondly, there was much daily variation in the time spent cooking.

In our survey week, there was a puja (prayer) in Asha’s house on the fourth day, and she had guests during the week. On day 4, she cooked rice, ragi (finger millet) ball, payasaam (or sweet with milk and vermicelli), paliya (vegetable curry), vada, sambar, papad, and buttermilk in the morning and lemon rice, vada, and papad in the evening. The time spent on cooking was 630 minutes or 10 hours and a half.

Alia has two young children and her husband, a manual worker, lives outside the village for work and comes home very rarely. During the reference week, he came on day 5 and stayed till day 7 as he was not well. On day 5 her parents also came to her house and husband bought chicken and mutton, and she spent 275 minutes or 4 hours and a half on cooking.

The time spent in cooking depends on many factors, including the number of household members, special meals or festivals, the number of women in the household, the electrical appliances (such as mixer-grinders) available, and the fuel used (mainly LPG or firewood).

Almost all the households we surveyed had an LPG connection, though most households used some firewood too. Although a little over half our sample household owned electric mixer-grinders appliances (mixer grinder), given prevalent cooking practices and food habits, the time spent on cooking was high. For example, many said the taste of spices ground by hand was better than spices ground by machine. Preparing a local speciality, ragi balls, was also time consuming.

Asha has LPG as well as an electric mixer-grinder at home but spends 35 hours a week cooking. She cooks separately for her husband and children according to their office and school timings. Sara has LPG, firewood, and biogas as well as an electric mixer-grinder in her home. Nevertheless, she spends 39 hours a week cooking, since she cooks for over 20 people. By contrast, Vina cooked only with firewood and had no electric mixer-grinder or other appliances but — since she had to cook, eat, and then leave for field labour — cooked frugal meals for herself, and spent less time on cooking than others.

To conclude, from the time use study we were able to throw light on one unpaid extended SNA activity, namely, cooking. Our main findings were that most women spent three hours or more on cooking each day, though there was also day-to-day variation in the time they spent cooking.

The materials used, appliances and eating habits together result in the long time spent in cooking. This, of course, constrains some women from going to work outside the house.

Table 1 Time spent on cooking by age and household size, Siresandra, Visit 2, December 2017, in minutes

Source: FAS survey data

Note: * refers to women from the same household:  (i) Neha and Sia (ii) Gopa and Sara.