Mapping unpaid women's work is India's next step in jobs puzzle

A breakdown of how women spend time can help design policies that make their lives easier and bring electoral gains for governments

India is trying to improve its jobs statistics with time-use surveys to estimate the value of unpaid work, especially household chores by women.

The government plans to start a yearlong exercise in January to survey households on how they spend their time, Debi Prasad Mondal, director general of the National Sample Survey Office, said in an interview in New Delhi. Its findings will be released around June 2020 and the plan is to repeat it every three years.

“We will be able to understand how much time is spent in cooking and washing,” Mondal said July 26. The findings would give policymakers