Debates on budgetary policies related to women’s work seldom treat the statistical invisibility of women’s work in the care economy or the unpaid economic activity of women at the household and community levels. Global estimates suggest that US $ 16 trillion of global output is not reflected or captured in official statistics and, of this, US $ 11 trillion constitutes the non-monetised, invisible work of women. Although a certain degree of statistical invisibility of unpaid work in the economy is a global phenomenon, it is particularly predominant in India and other South Asian nations due to the orthodox socio-cultural milieu. Legacies of adverse intra-household gender relations inhibit women from contributing to the economy and getting their due share of economic benefits in many countries, particularly developing ones. Gender budgeting, that is, the analysis of the impact of policies and the budget on women, is being done in more and more countries all over the world to capture these issues of urgent concern.

The seriousness of the failure to meaningfully pursue gender budgeting for women workers is obvious when one analyses the Statement of Gender Budgeting published in the Union budget of India for 2008-09 (Expenditure Budget, Volume 1, 2008-09, p 56-64). The estimates reveal that there is no budgetary allocation under the Ministry of Labour and Employment specifically targeted at women workers. Even if we were to add all the provisions and allocations in the budget specifically targeted for women from across all ministries and departments, including the budgetary allocations for women’s hostels, day-care centres, trade-related entrepreneurial assistance programmes for women workers, the Support to Training and Employment Progamme (STEP), Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) related women workers, etc., it would be less than one per cent of total budgetary allocations.

Underlying this failure are two factors: the budgetary policy makers of India do not realise the significance of identifying and framing care economy policies for women workers due to the statistical invisibility of women’s work within the care economy, nor do they appropriately prioritise and frame public expenditure on women workers in the market economy.

There is a growing recognition that budgetary policy can redress intra-household inequalities, in terms of the household division of labour, by supporting initiatives that reduce the time allocated by women to non-market work. Such budgetary policy interventions may include improved public infrastructure in the water sector, rural electrification, roads, sanitation services and transport. For instance, a World Bank study in Madagascar revealed that easy accessibility to drinking water facilities might lead to an increase in school enrolment, particularly for girls. It was found that 83 per cent of the girls who did not go to school spent their time collecting water whereas only 58 per cent of the girls who attended school spent time collecting water (Bredie and Beehary, 1998). Yet another study on Bangladesh revealed that it is not patriarchy per se that restricts women’s entry into the labour market, but economic factors such as low wages and low education. In the context of Pakistan, a study indicated that the worsening of public investment in the water-gathering infrastructure caused an increase in the burden on women.

There have been relatively few attempts to incorporate women’s work in the care economy into macro policy-making, not only in India, but across all developing countries. Time-budget data is used to capture the allocation of time to perform various tasks. In this context, such data are increasingly important as these capture the extent of the burden of unpaid work on women within the care economy. Such data would indicate the extent to which economic development, and the associated feminisation of labour, would give a fillip to the growth rate of the GDP, by leading to the substitution of self-performance of services by purchases from the market. Monitoring such estimates over time can also help in understanding the effect of policies on self-performance of services, critical for a welfare state. 

A Time-use Survey (TUS) was conducted in India by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in about 18,600 households across six states from July 1998 to June 1999. However, the inferences from the Survey, which emphasised the magnitude of statistically invisible, unpaid work by women in the care economy, have not informed macro policy-making in India.

Another important study is that of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP). This pioneering study on gender budgeting in India highlighted the significance of incorporating women’s work in the care economy in budgetary policy-making. The study highlighted that intra-household gender asymmetries in the intensity of work and in the allocation of time for work, and the choices regarding labour force participation in the care economy have always been invisible in macro policies. Recognising that the dynamic interaction between the dual sets of economic activity, that is, the economic activity within the statistically invisible care economy and that of the market economy, the NIPFP study applies global substitution criteria of price variables to the time-use budgets to value women’s work in the care economy across selected states in India and, in turn, integrates these into macro policies.

In other words, by correlating district-wise data on wage rates for agricultural labour and urban unskilled manual labour with the time-budget data, the NIPFP study arrived at a valuation of women`s unpaid work in the rural and urban areas of India. The estimates show that the value of the time spent on care economy activities by women in Gujarat and Haryana is as much as 26-28 per cent of the relevant state domestic product (SDP) (Table 1).

The total value of such work performed by women was Rs 22,578 crores and Rs 10,209 crores in Gujarat and Haryana, respectively, whereas the SDPs of these two states were Rs 86,609 crores and Rs. 37,427 crores, respectively. In comparison, the valuation of work performed by men within the care economy was only about 23 per cent of SDP in these two states. The care economy, as a proportion of SDP, is as high as 49.93 per cent in Meghalaya and 47 per cent in Madhya Pradesh.

The real challenge of gender budgeting is to integrate gender into mainstream expenditure. Gender budgeting thus exerts thrust on policy makers to integrate the care economy into fiscal policy. Existing fiscal policies on the care economy are very myopic. For instance, though the emphasis on day-care centres for working women being given is an important policy initiative, it has relevance only to working women in the organised sector, who form a miniscule percentage of the working population, especially in developing countries. Time-budget data helps in identifying requisite care economy policies for women in the informal sector. Additionally, existing gender budgeting studies reveal that a significant share of the specifically targeted programmes for women is directed at protective and welfare services for women, with only meagre amounts budgeted for economic services targeted at women, including employment generation programmes for women.

Recognising that the allocation and efficient management of time by women in the care economy might be more important to economic growth than women`s work in the market economy through its positive externalities, the study has recommended the integration of the inferences from time-use surveys in gender budgeting. However, the existing budgetary policy initiatives remain largely confined to a meagre budgetary allocation for the women workers in the market economy.

References

• Becker, Gary S (1965): “A Theory of the Allocation of Time”, Economic Journal, 75, pp 493-517.
• Bredie, J and Beehary, G (1998): `School Enrolment Decline in Sub Saharan Africa`, World Bank Discussion Paper No. 395.
• Gronau, Reuben (1977): ‘Leisure, home  production and the theory of the allocation of time revisited’ Journal of Political Economy, 85(6), pp 1099-1123
• NIPFP (2002): ‘Gender Budgeting in India’, NIPFP, India, Available at: http://www.nipfp.org.in/genderbudgetlink.asp