Revision summary
Gendered work splits unpaid care from paid public labour. It subsidises capitalist growth and human development of children. It also blocks women’s capabilities, skills, and voice. Oakley, Walby, Hartmann, and Sen frame the impact. NFHS and PLFS are the Indian files. Development that ignores time-use is a male public account.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
The gender division of labour assigns men and women different work, especially unpaid care versus paid public work. Development as growth and capability is shaped by that split. A GDP story that ignores it misreads both progress and stagnation.
Body
The division
- Ann Oakley made housework visible as labour. Sylvia Walby placed the household as a patriarchal structure.
- PLFS low female labour-force rates often hide home-based and care work.
- R. W. Connell’s gender order organises masculinities around the breadwinner ideal.
Impacts on development
- Unpaid care subsidises the wage, which Marxist feminists after Heidi Hartmann named. Capitalist development rides that subsidy.
- Human development: children’s nutrition and schooling depend on that labour, as NFHS health files imply.
- Growth can rise while women’s time poverty deepens. Amartya Sen’s capabilities then diverge by sex.
- Informalisation often feminises the cheap shell of the economy.
Impacts that block development
- Exclusion from skills and assets slows the talent pool, against even Davis–Moore sorting.
- Violence and restricted mobility, in NFHS, cut public participation and entrepreneurship.
- Development policy that only adds microcredit without cutting care loads reproduces the split.
Reciprocal note
- Some development, such as public childcare, can re-divide labour. That is rare and fought for.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD GDL[Gender division of labour] --> CARE[Unpaid care subsidy] GDL --> CHEAP[Feminised informal wage] CARE --> DEV[Development as growth] GDL --> BLOCK[Lost capabilities] BLOCK --> UNEVEN[Uneven development]
Conclusion
The gender division of labour underwrites development by supplying unpaid care and cheap feminised work, and it blocks development by wasting capabilities and voice. Oakley, Walby, Hartmann, and Sen are the measures. Count GDP, then count time.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Present a sociological review on the 'new middle class'
Next question on this syllabus topic (2019 · Q1(d)). View answer →
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Does more female employment end the division?
Not if the double day remains. Public care and male unpaid work must shift too.
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Is this only a household issue?
The household is a development institution. Factories and the state already use its output.
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