Gendered Patterns of Unpaid Care Work Distribution in India: An Empirical Exploration from First Large Scale Time Use Survey 2019.

The purpose of the paper is twofold: one is to explore the debates surrounding unpaid care work, and another one is to examine empirically the patterns of unpaid care work distribution across the gender lines in India. The domestic labour debate has been overviewed highlighting the critical arguments put forth by feminist scholars from the late 1960s to the present. Then, with the help of the data from the first pan Indian Time Use Survey-2019 (ITUS-19), we examined the working of the gender dynamics both in the rural and the urban spaces. The findings show the existence of a sharp gender gap, both in terms of participation and average time allocation, in unpaid care work across the rural and urban places of residence in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]