Unpaid labour

This paper seeks to contribute to the existing literature by undertaking a State level analysis of the changes in the time spent on paid and unpaid work by men and women (gender differentials) and in rural and urban areas. Time Use Surveys provide critical insights in the time distribution by men and women for paid and unpaid work. The paper compares a broad brush of the hours per week spent by males and females in paid and unpaid work and seeks to understand the rural-urban differences in time use based on TUS 1998 and 2019. A comparison of TUS 1998 and TUS 2019 reveals a substantial increase in hours spent by both males and females in paid and unpaid work and the increase in hours spent on paid work was higher for both males and females at the aggregate level for the six States considered in TUS 1998. There, however, exist large interState variations in time use. Societal and cultural norms may contribute to the fewer hours spent by males on unpaid work in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya. The gender gap in paid work has increased significantly in Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa and a reverse gender gap, namely, greater time spent by females than males, can be observed for unpaid work with a significant widening seen in Tamil Nadu and Haryana.

While women's labour insertion has significantly increased, wide gender gaps persist: women partipate less in labour markets, their employment conditions are worse, they face glass walls and ceilings and they are discriminated by the law. Achieving gender equity is not only a moral imperative, but it also key for growth and development. The G20 countries have committed to reduce the gap in labour participation 25% by 2025, yet progress has been slim and thus innovative solutions need to be implemented. This document aims to provide policy recommendations to achieve this goal and bridge gender gaps in the world of work. During the last decades women have massively entered the labour market. However, wide gender gaps persist. In 2017, global female labour force participation reached 49.4%, 26.7 p.p. lower than for men and no improvements are expected in the short term (ILO, 2017). Women are more likely to remain economically inactive and, when they do participate in labour markets, they are more prone to be unemployed, work in the informal economy, receive lower wages, concentrate in less dynamic sectors and be under-represented at the top (Kabeer, 2017). Thus, while female labour insertion and conditions have progressed, these have not necessarily translated into decent work or economic empowerment.

the present issue paper was drafted for the BRICS 2021 EWG  to provide a (i) brief review
of the trends in participation of women in labour force in BRICS countries;
(ii) identify the opportunities and challenges for promoting women’s work;
(iii) highlight some of the recent and innovative policy interventions
introduced in all the BRICS countries for boosting women’s employment
and;(iv) identify the issues for discussion. This issue paper aims at
providing some insights to engage in a meaningful discussion for
contributing towards larger policy issues on improving female labour
force participation.

The Politics of Unpaid Labour introduces the theory of the politics of unpaid labour to advance understanding of inequality within the context of precarious work. It understands unpaid labour as the time and effort people invest to undertake tasks which relate to the work implicitly or explicitly assigned to them, but for which they are not paid. The book establishes a crucial link between unpaid labour's political dimensions and its role in fuelling emerging forms of precarious work characterized by persistent inequalities in a context of labour market reforms, societal shifts, and technological changes, and it reveals how these seemingly disparate elements intertwine, connecting the intricate dynamics of the social system's micro-level components to larger macro-level structural patterns.

Comparing working conditions in creative dance, residential care, and online freelancing in the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and Poland, the book's empirical section is based on a wide range of biographical interviews and work diaries. In addition to introducing the major themes, theories, and thinkers of inequality and precarious work within the tradition of work, employment, and economic studies in sociology and the political economy, the theoretical section advances the current discussion on how unpaid labour contributes to inequality in precarious work in three ways. First, it establishes the characteristics differentiating employment from self-employment, and how these lead to a revised definition of unpaid labour. Second, it illustrates that unpaid labour is both shaped by class and serves to reproduce class interests, revealing ongoing changes in welfare, employment, and state institutional policies. Third, it considers the necessity to establish conditions within the labour market conducive to genuinely cultivating and honouring the diversity of human capabilities and actions within labour structures and promoting their manifestation.

Purpose – The rise of app-based work in the gig economy, particularly within the food delivery sector,
challenges traditional employment paradigms and raises questions about the potential for achieving meaningful
work experiences. This study explores whether such work can be considered meaningful for food delivery
couriers in Poland.
Design/methodology/approach – This research adopts a qualitative, case-study approach, conducting 30 indepth
interviews with food delivery couriers in Poland. The study investigates how these workers perceive the
meaningfulness of their work, focusing on the interplay between subjective and organisational aspects of
their work.
Findings – The findings reveal that despite the precarious nature of app-based work, couriers often find
meaningful experiences through perceived autonomy, gamified control and the physical demands of their job.
The study highlights the dual nature of app work, where the same elements that contribute to worker engagement
and a sense of independence also perpetuate exploitation and job insecurity.
Research limitations/implications – The study’s reliance on a convenience sample of 30 interviews conducted
via social media may not represent the broader population of food delivery couriers. Future research should
expand the sample size and include a more diverse range of participants to improve generalisability.
Practical implications – The insights from this study can inform platform designers and policymakers to create
more supportive environments for gig workers. Enhancing algorithmic transparency, providing better social
protections and implementing fair gamification strategies can help mitigate the negative aspects of gig work and
improve job satisfaction.
Social implications – The study underscores the need for regulatory changes to ensure minimum guaranteed
earnings and health and safety provisions for gig workers. By fostering a supportive and transparent work
environment, the gig economy can better contribute to worker well-being and social equity.
Originality/value – This research contributes to the limited body of literature on meaningful work within the gig
economy, particularly focusing on food delivery couriers in Poland. It provides new insights into how workers
create and perceive meaningful work in a highly digitised and algorithmically managed environment.

GIGA Working Papers serve to disseminate the research results of work in progress prior to publicaton to encourage the exchange of ideas and academic debate. Inclusion of a paper in the Working Papers series does not constitute publication and should not limit publication in any other venue. Copyright remains with the authors.

Past to five decades earlier, the very perception of a women entrepreneur managing her own business firm could have appeared ambitious at the highest points. Women entrepreneurship evolved in spite of problems surrounding it such as discrimination, gender inequalities and many more regressive social norms [2]. A lot of women's have started their own businesses in order to break free from social constraints. Women proved themselves to be strong innovators. Expressly in some of the economically developing nations, the opportunities offered by women entrepreneurs help grow markets and also increase the employment prospects. But despite progress, the topic is of vital significance because of the challenges which stand still and should be treated as global phenomenon. "There are merely about 10 countries across the globe where entrepreneurship is equal in terms of gender equality [2]." The current global trend founds women owned businesses to be more concentrated in small and medium enterprises with a ratio of overall low-profitability or low-growth sectors. Women's are found to stick or limit themselves to a range of business choices such as fashion retail, beauty cosmetics and food services [1] & [2]. "In continents of Africa and Asia, approximately 75 percent of women are in these consumer-oriented sectors. They are seldom into mining, construction, electronics and big data technologies" Caren Grown, senior director for gender at the World Bank, advocated [1]. The study highlights current participation of women entrepreneurs in the markets of G20 countries.

Little is known about risk management in homecare for people with dementia. We aimed to gain an understanding of the ways in which homecare workers assess and manage risk whilst caring for people with dementia in their own homes. We conducted a qualitative interview study with 17 homecare workers assisting people with dementia with their personal care. Interviews were faceto-face, semi-structured, recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis was inductive and thematic. A key theme of risk was identified, with three main sources: the client as a source of risk to the homecare worker, the clients' home and behaviours as a risk to the client, and the wider health and social care system as a risk to both clients and homecare workers. Three interrelated aspects of risk were found to influence homecare workers' decision-making and actions: homecare workers perception of the level of risk, their perceived ability to control the risk, and their tolerability of risk. The higher the perceived risk, the stronger the action taken by the worker or agency to mitigate it and the greater the impact on the client. To support effective development of this workforce there is a need to devise training that incorporates the use of tacit knowledge and experiential learning. Risk management policies for homecare should acknowledge and utilise the expertise, experiences and values of homecare workers.

Homecare workers provide essential physical, social and emotional support to growing numbers of older people with dementia in the UK. Although it is acknowledged that the work can sometimes be demanding, some homecare workers regularly ‘go the extra mile’ for service users, working above and beyond the usual remit of the job. This form of voluntarism has been interpreted as an expression of an essentially caring nature, but also as the product of a work environment structured to tacitly endorse the provision of unpaid labour. This paper draws on a qualitative study of what constitutes ‘good’ homecare for older people with dementia. Using homecare workers’ reflexive diaries ( n = 11) and interviews with homecare workers ( n = 14) and managers ( n = 6), we explore manifestations of, and motivations for, homecare workers going the extra mile in their everyday work. We describe three modes of voluntary labour based on these accounts which we characterise as affective, performative and p...

With the collapse of farming populations in Western societies and the spread of agroecology, agricultural work is being transformed. This changing environment is opening the door to new configurations and new forms of free or unpaid labour in agriculture, raising questions about the understanding and future of agricultural activity. Our aim is to characterise how free labour in agriculture is defined, conceptualised and analysed in the scientific literature. To meet this objective, we intend to set up a Scoping Review on free labour in agriculture. We detail the methodology adopted for this review in this protocol, according to the framework provided by the Johanna Briggs Institute (JBI). After specifying our research question, we detail our eligibility criteria (Participants, Concept and Context (PCC)) for this Scoping review: we study the concept of free labour in a context of agricultural activity, through workers, farms and agricultural models. We then detail the development of our research strategy and the study selection process. Finally, the last section sets out the elements that will be the focus of our attention when analysing the results.

Digital platforms provide many workers with vital income and offer the promise of flexible work, and yet also contribute to experiences of precariousness and exploitation, particularly with regard to pressures to undertake unpaid work. This article explores why unpaid labour is necessary and what drives its extent and form among diverse types of digital platforms. We theorize two ideal types of 'open' and 'closed' socio-technical platform regimes of worker autonomy, building on sociological insights about sociotechnical systems, management control over worker autonomy and labour market segmentation by skill. In principle, 'open' ('closed') platform regimes grant relatively high (low) worker autonomy in terms of access to the platform, paid work and control over work tasks.

This document outlines the position of a group of research and non-governmental organizations on care needs and care policies in the G20 countries. It provides a summary of why addressing care needs is fundamental for women's economic empowerment and frames these policies in terms of protecting the right to care and be cared for. We call for more effort to recognize, reduce, redistribute and represent unpaid care work and to protect the rights of paid care workers. We provide a number of examples of successful policy and programme initiatives for G20 countries to consider expanding in their own domestic policy agenda as well as their development assistance to further women's economic empowerment globally. Challenge Worldwide, the responsibility for unpaid care work (UCW) falls disproportionally on women and girls, leaving them less time for education, leisure, self-care, political participation, paid work and other economic activities. The social construction of gender roles and responsibilities shapes and reinforces the gender division of labour where men are over-represented in paid work and women in unpaid work. Yet while these patterns are changing and more women are entering paid work, the bulk of unpaid work continues to be undertaken by women and girls (Figure 1), leading to longer work days and more time poverty.

Defi nitions of economy and society, and their proper relationship to each other, have been the perennial concerns of social philosophers. In the early decades of the twenty-fi rst century these became and remain matters of urgent political debate. At the forefront of this series are the approaches to these connections by anthropologists, whose explorations of the local ideas and institutions underpinning social and economic relations illuminate large fi elds ignored in other disciplines.

Examination of unpaid work is inter alia essential for the assessment of gender differences in different countries. The paper compares the various aspects of unpaid work between genders. We can confirm that women spent more time by unpaid work in all countries in the sample. The difference is more often evident in less developed countries. The main aim of the paper is to identify the determinants of unpaid work done by men and women. Using the regression models applied on cross-sectional data, we found that the determinants are different for the two genders. On the one hand the unpaid work done by women is more influenced by the number of children and elderly in the population as well as by the wage level in the labour market. On the other hand, male unpaid work is affected mostly by the number of Internet users and the educational level. The size of paid work is an important determinant for both genders.

A group of women in the North East of England; all mothers, all out of paid work or in low waged temporary employment; women getting on and getting by amidst austerity. But what does austerity become for these women? How does it surface and register in their everyday lives through a series of fragmented encounters? Together, we developed a fictional play to explore what austerity becomes in the midst of other things. Encounters ranged from the un-dramatic to the almost intense and evental, from an empty flowerbed at the end of the street to service closure and a loss of support. In our play we tried to make a story of austerity through these and other disparate encounters, but the plot kept falling apart. Our attempts to dramatize austerity using theatre-as-method revealed its multiplicity and incoherence. As austerity differently met and co-constituted the lives of women in a supposedly shared demographic, it disrupted opportunity for collective experience, so that even austerity w...

Women considerably contribute to a large part of an economy through their productive work but their works are not recognized due to the inadequate definition of ‘economic activity, used in the national income accounting. A major section of the invisible work performed by rural women remains unidentified, undefined, and unpaid. Since the definition of economics is bounded by the market framework, much of the non-market work performed by women remain invisible and has consequently caused the market devaluation of women’s work. Present primary data-based study on Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh studies the valuation of paid and unpaid household activities of rural women by Market replacement cost method. The study finds that the total average time spent on unpaid SNA and Extended SNA activities by non-working women is almost double the time spent by working women. The daily and monthly wages for unpaid household activities work for the non-working woman is about 28.34 per cent highe...

While women's labour insertion has significantly increased, wide gender gaps persist: women partipate less in labour markets, their employment conditions are worse, they face glass walls and ceilings and they are discriminated by the law. Achieving gender equity is not only a moral imperative, but it also key for growth and development. The G20 countries have committed to reduce the gap in labour participation 25% by 2025, yet progress has been slim and thus innovative solutions need to be implemented. This document aims to provide policy recommendations to achieve this goal and bridge gender gaps in the world of work. Challenge During the last decades women have massively entered the labour market. However, wide gender gaps persist. In 2017, global female labour force participation reached 49.4%, 26.7 p.p. lower than for men and no improvements are expected in the short term (ILO, 2017). Women are more likely to remain economically inactive and, when they do participate in labour markets, they are more prone to be unemployed, work in the informal economy, receive lower wages, concentrate in less dynamic sectors and be under-represented at the top (Kabeer, 2017). Thus, while female labour insertion and conditions have progressed, these have not necessarily translated into decent work or economic empowerment.

This paper aims to offer an in-depth account on the forms and conditions of unpaid labour in the platform economy, as these represent a crucial element in the way that working lives are precarious under platform labour regimes. The researchers delve into three major economic sectors where platforms are thriving – food delivery, care and domestic services, and freelancing professional services; and five European countries – France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Poland.

This article offers a feminist reading of home-baking. It explores the shifting ways in which baking has variously been bound up with a variety of normative values, such as familial ‘togetherness’, care, patriotism, thrift and display. This article draws on a range of historical examples, from the patriotic virtues of home-baking extolled via British war-time propaganda, and the ‘wholesome, simple and economical’ post-war Bero baking recipes, through to the renewed emphasis on display and baking as interwoven with new consumer cultures in the bestselling 1960s recipe book Cooking in Colour. This article goes on to explore contemporary representations of baking as ‘fun’ rather than as work. Drawing on the popular British television baking show The Great British Bake Off, this article considers how historical associations of baking with thrift, competition and ‘betterment’ are repackaged as cosy and nostalgic via a hyper-real reflection of the past. In keeping with neoliberal assumpti...

Unpaid work is the production of goods and services by household members that are not sold on the market. Some unpaid work is for the consumption within the family, such as cooking, gardening and house cleaning. The products of unpaid work may also be consumed by people not living in the household, e.g. cooking a meal for visiting friends, helping in a soup kitchen for homeless people, mowing the lawn of an elderly relative, or coaching the local football team. At a national level, well-being is often peroxide by aggregate income or production per head (e.g. GDP per capita). However, neither measure is fully adequate if there is a considerable amount of unpaid work or if growth occurs because of substitution of paid for unpaid hours of work. Household production constitutes an important aspect of economic activity. Ignoring it may lead to incorrect inferences about levels and changes in well-being. Using the secondary data, this presentation presents the fact that women do much of t...

This article offers a feminist reading of home-baking. It explores the shifting ways in which baking has variously been bound up with a variety of normative values, such as familial 'togetherness', care, patriotism, thrift and display. This article draws on a range of historical examples, from the patriotic virtues of home-baking extolled via British wartime propaganda, and the 'wholesome, simple and economical' postwar Bero baking recipes, through to the renewed emphasis on display and baking as interwoven with new consumer cultures in the bestselling 1960s recipe book Cooking in Colour. This article goes on to explore contemporary representations of baking as 'fun' rather than as work. Drawing on the popular British television baking show The Great British Bake Off, this article considers how historical associations of baking with thrift, competition and 'betterment' are repackaged as cosy and nostalgic via a hyper-real reflection of the past. In keeping with neoliberal assumptions about the meritocratic and 'life-changing' potential of reality TV, this article argues that The Great British Bake Off offers viewers a 'high-consuming ideal'. This article examines how, via the medium of home-baking, the show reinforces both neoliberal myths of individuals as agents of their own successes and also normative assumptions of self-transformation via consumption and commercialization. This article concludes by arguing that The Great British Bake Off offers a version of baking that is both 'hyper-domestic' and a type of 'post-feminist homemaking', whereby feminist discourses of choice and equality are entangled with highly conventional modes of domesticity.

The global estimates indicate a low participation of women in the labour force and prominent gender gap at 50 percentage points evidenced in regions like South Asia as reported by the International Labour Organization. Within the South Asian context, India has witnessed a decline in the female labour market participation from 34.1% in 1999-2000 to 27.2% in 2011-2012 as per the National Sample Survey Organization. Also, the domestic duties participation for women in India has increased. Women perform a large number of economic activities but most of their contributions remain underestimated with underreporting of women's work. The present paper is contextualized within the emerging labour process theories to understand the gender differentials in employment trends in India. There is an attempt to analyse women's unpaid work with specific emphasis on their participation in household and related activities (domestic duties), thereby exploring intrahousehold dynamics and role of socio-cultural norms in interpreting gender roles in the household. The paper engages with intersections of caste, marital status and household size to understand women's constraints to participate in paid employment within the emerging labour processes in the contemporary society.

In this paper, I offer a framework for analyzing non-market oriented household activities in a way that overcomes some issues about defining the boundaries among household activities. I utilize the concept of a social process and discuss how unpaid household activities are part of labor, care, recreation, and consumption processes. Next, I explain the importance of introducing economic class and social class processes into the framework, as well as the importance of making a distinction between the two. Economic class accounts for the basics of the capitalist economy, and social class opens contexts of variation. The framework allows for a multidimensionality of individuals and opens the question of unpaid activities varying in categorization based on economic class. Also, it helps the economic analysis of capitalism consider that maintaining a household lifestyle directly involves and pertains to unpaid household activities that are part of each of the delineated labor, care, recreation, and consumption processes.

Special Issue, The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches Co-edited by Agnoletto, S. and Palmieri, C. http://zapruderworld.org/journal/archive/volume-3/overcoming-barriers-to-voluntary-servitude-positive-thinking-and-self-help-the-post-political-ideology-of-workfare/

The volunteer moderators that run the boards at Reddit, an online community built of thousands of themed discussion groups, recently staged an uprising against the firm's management. That this uprising ultimately claimed the scalp of Reddit chief exec Ellen Pao says much about how the world of work is changing, particularly the challenges of managing relationships between paid and unpaid workers in an increasingly virtual workplace.

Garland, C. (2014) ‘As Barriers Fall, Contingency Becomes Possibility: Protest Resisting and Escaping Containment and Categorization’, Part II Identity, Embodiment and Categorisation in Eds. Lamond, I. and Spracklen, K. 'Protests as Events: Politics, Activism and Leisure (London: Rowman & Littlefield International) Hardback ISBN/9781783480760 Paperback ISBN/978-1-78348-077-7 eBook ISBN/978-1-78348-078-4 

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781783480760