Unpaid, unseen, unending: The workdays of rural women

Even though women contribute to a household’s income, their labour, both paid and unpaid, and their individuality are constantly devalued. For equitable development, the definition of progress should consider their empowerment.

In Devadurga, a taluk in Raichur district, Karnataka, the sun rises slowly over fields. The dusty main road near the bus stand fills gradually with bikes and tractors, and tea stalls begin to hum with conversations.

Gauri’s day, however, begins long before the rooster crows. At around 4.30 am, when it is still dark outside, she moves quietly across the mud floor, taking care not to disturb the others.

In a small kitchen beside the storeroom, she lights the stove and begins preparing the food while attending to other household duties. The scraping of utensils and the hiss of the fire mark the first hours of her day.

Once the household is in motion, the next layer of labour begins for Gauri. Tying the end of her sari, she picks up her bag and walks toward the fields beyond the canal embankment for the day’s work.

While working in the field, when the days stretch under a harsh, oppressive sun, backs bend and fingers move constantly. Still, stopping is not an option. If she doesn’t go to the field, the work will continue, but her income will fall.

By evening, she returns from the fields with dust on her feet and aches in her limbs. Nevertheless, the day does not end for her; it merely shifts indoors. Dinner needs to be cooked, water fetched, the elders attended to, and the children fed. Gauri eats last, often in silence, and goes to sleep knowing the same routine will repeat at dawn.

The daily schedule does not look very different for Savitri, who works for the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). Long before her paid labour begins, her day starts at 5 am with cooking, cleaning, fetching water, and caring for her family’s cows.

From 1 pm, she works in the fields for three hours. At 4 pm, she returns home to perform additional household chores, after which she steps out for survey work linked to NRLM. She returns home at 7 pm to cook for the family, eating only after 9 pm. 

Lakshmi works as a driver for the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) vehicle, collecting solid waste from the villages. However, much like Gauri and Savitri, her day too begins much earlier, at least three hours before her official duty starts at 7 am.

After her work as the SBM driver, she starts her second job at a nursery, caring for plants. At 6 pm, she returns home to cook dinner and do other household activities. She uses a brief window between cooking and eating to get some rest and catch up on her favourite television serials. 

Shanta and Kamala, who work as a teacher and a tailor, respectively, have similar work schedules. All these women work almost continuously, with no clear breaks; only transitions between different kinds of paid and unpaid labour. 

Different occupations, one shared reality

To an outsider, the lives of these women might appear different; after all, what commonality can an NRLM worker, a driver, a teacher, a tailor, and a daily labourer possibly have?

However, this dissimilarity is only superficial. The daily schedules of these women follow an almost identical pattern: paid work is invariably bookended by unpaid domestic labour that begins before sunrise and extends well after sunset. 

The routine of these women is not an outlier; it is a reality that many women face, not only in Devadurga but across many rural areas, where their domestic labour remains unpaid, unnamed, and largely invisible. Cooking, cleaning, and caring are often viewed as a woman’s duty, rather than as something valuable in its own right.

Across India, time-use surveys reveal how deeply gendered this pattern is. According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (2020), women spend an average of 289 minutes per day on unpaid domestic work, compared to 88 minutes spent by men. 

The privilege of rest

When people speak of ‘work’, they usually refer to labour that is both public and paid; and most often, men’s. Men’s labour is tied to fieldwork, market activity, or seasonal agricultural cycles. Furthermore, it is believed they exert significant effort in the form of physical labour, and confront economic uncertainty and seasonal risks. 

By contrast, even though women also work for long hours, and their contribution adds to the family’s income, they have neither ownership over it, nor control over its allocation. It is men who discuss purchases, savings, household expenditures, and farm-related investments. 

This devaluation of women’s labour, both paid and unpaid, impacts how society treats their time, mobility, and right to rest. Men wake later in the morning and begin their day only when agricultural or wage-based work is scheduled.

When those tasks are completed, or when there is no immediate work available, men commonly spend time in public spaces, sitting at tea stalls, resting near roadside platforms, discussing politics or farming, or playing informal games. Rest, for them, is considered a natural pause after an effort; something earned, not questioned.

For women, contrastingly, the work is continuous and rarely time-bound. Domestic responsibilities, caregiving, and agricultural labour overlap considerably, existing in a cycle with no identifiable breaks.

This imbalance becomes even more pronounced during peak agricultural seasons, when women, after working long hours under intense sunlight in the fields and carrying loads, return home to continue household labour. 

Even when women are physically worn out, rest is not readily available. For them, sitting outside, socialising, or pausing in public spaces is often viewed as inappropriate or indulgent. A resting woman may be judged as careless, lazy, or neglectful of her responsibilities.

This privilege of rest reveals something deeper: the inequality is not about how much work is done, but about who is doing the work. It reflects a deeper hierarchy of whose time is more valuable; whose exhaustion is acknowledged; and whose body is allowed relief.

Even as conversations around development intensify, and even as we embark on programmes on water security, climate resilience, and agricultural prosperity, there are some crucial questions that should be considered when defining ‘progress’: is the burden of invisible labour being reduced?

Are the efforts of Gauri, Savitri, Lakshmi, Shanta, and Kamala being recognised? Are they being empowered in any manner? The pathways of development we imagine for Raichur must integrate these perspectives. Ignoring these would result in resilience and development being founded on skewed or flawed ideas. 

Gauri is an amalgamation of multiple women the writer interacted with and observed. The names have been changed to protect identities. 

The writer is a research associate at WELL Labs, a water systems
transformation centre based in Bengaluru.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)