Indian women spend 5 hours a day on domestic work, while men 1.3 hour: Survey

New Delhi, Sep 30: Women in India spend about five hours a day on unpaid domestic work, or thrice as much time as men, according to a first-of-its-kind 'Time Use Survey' conducted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

The first Time-Use survey shows only about 18 per cent of women participated in employment and related activities in a day, against 57 per cent of men, following wide gender disparity.

Also, women represent 49 per cent of the nation's population yet contribute only 18 per cent to its economic output, about half the global average.

The participation of Indian women in the labor force is among the least in the world and they earn 35 per cent less on average than men.

It shows women participation in unpaid domestic services for household members - cooking, cleaning, household management - is as high as 81.2 per cent each day compared with 26.1 per cent for men.

Women spend 299 minutes (almost 5 hours), thrice as much as men (97 minutes or 1 hour 37 minutes).

'Time Use in India 2019', whose findings were released Tuesday, has been conducted for the first time in the country.

The primary objective of the survey was to measure participation of men and women in paid and unpaid activities as well as measure the time dispositions on different activities.

As many as 1.39 lakh households across the country comprising 4.47 lakh persons over the age of six were enumerated.

The survey also shows that Indians are reluctant in doing unpaid volunteers or trainees or to take part in community or organisation-based unpaid volunteering.

Only 2.4 per cent of the respondents said they volunteer for such work. The time spent on volunteering is around 101 minutes a day.

Where, chatting, conversing, community participation by taking part in gatherings and religious participation, is very high with almost 91.3 per cent of the respondents taking part in these activities each day, spending on an average around 143 minutes each day.