Paid–Unpaid Work Continuum of Women: Home-Based Workers and Self-Employed Women in the National Capital Region

Abstract

Women’s work is a continuum that intersperses productive work with reproductive work, unpaid work with paid work and all kinds of activities with leisure and self-care. She plans, manages and implements her work at home, often being responsible for all the three domains. Women from working-class families may seem to be making a “choice” in deciding the continuum, and delving deep, we find that it is more often a “coping mechanism” in “managing poverty” of all forms—income, time and opportunity. This paper explores how women’s organisation of work is influenced by the interplay of three institutions—State, market and family, and how gendered division of work is reproduced in the process.