Women Farmers & the Burden of Unpaid Labour

 

Easter is a time of hope just as is the election season. As one reflects on what is needed to make women and girls rise and thrive in this the season of the Risen Son who suffered so that we could all thrive, one thing stands out. Unpaid labour drags down women and girls in general and women farmers in particular. It affects lives, health and livelihood drastically.

Being liberated from the cross of unpaid labour can ensure that women and society can thrive. 

On World Water Day (March 22), many organizations had shared how the lack of access to clean water and sanitation adds immensely to the burden of unpaid work for women. This leads to many social evils such as early marriage, child marriage and polygamy - water wives or "pani bai". 

The Cross of Unpaid Labour

According to "Unpaid Work and Women Workers: A Growing Crisis," the report published in December 2023 of a survey conducted by the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), New Delhi, across Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and Delhi of 2,500 women:

“Women workers continue to bear the lion’s share of domestic and care responsibilities, and to the extent that this work is shared, it is often shared not with spouses but with girl children. … are often overworked and exhausted - and bearing the mental and physical costs of such overwork. … the sheer scale at which work beyond the agreed upon informal or formal contract - i.e., unpaid work - is extracted from women workers even in paid contracts. Even more shockingly, this also applied to government works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act [MGNREGA now renamed Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin): VB-G RAM G]."

This crisis affects women in the agricultural sector almost disproportionately high. 

Source: Presentation by Seema Kulkarni, Asian College of Journalism Climate Change Media Hub's "Climate Change Conversations," online media education session on "Reporting on Climate and Gender: A Rural Perspective." March 27, 2026.

Improving access to services will in itself reduce the burden of unpaid labour that eats into the time, health and lives of women in general and poor, rural women and women farmers and farm labourers in particular.

As the ISS report puts it, 

"time spent by women on unpaid care work is the availability and quality of publicly provisioned services, amenities and basic infrastructure. Typically poorer settlements esp in developing countries are plagued with inadequate access to proper pucca housing, drinking water, fuel, food, healthcare, creches, support for the elderly, food security, and so on. The absence of these facilities is subsidised by the drudgery of unpaid self-exploitative care work, a result of the patriarchal gender-based division of labour wherein the responsibility for care and family survival is the woman’s domain."

Thus better access to piped water, sanitation - #SDG6, affordable cooking fuel (most relevant in April 2026 in view of the fuel crisis as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran that has affected global fuel supplies as well as the global supply chain increasing prices all around.), clean energy (decentralized solar providing electricity to informal and rural settlements ensuring security) - #SDG7, anganwadis (child care), primary health centres - #SDG3GoodHealthAndWellBeing, affordable food (functional and corruption free ration shops) - #SDG2ZeroHunger as well as support for elder care and patient care within the family will ensure women and girls can have time and space to thrive. This is true empowerment and Gender Equality (#SDG5) in our mostly patriarchal homes. 

When women and girls in general and women farmers in particular are provided access to such functional social security and safety net they thrive.  

In election season, ensuring these services to the women electorate is a better poll promise than the freebies and "biryani-alcohol" packages to male voters.