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Abstract
Based on time-use data from a 2013 primary household survey, this study examines the nature and extent of time-poverty experienced by men and women in peasant households in Mozambique. The main findings indicate that while women's labor allocation to economic activities is comparable to that of men, household chores and care work are almost entirely women's responsibility. The heavy burden of responsibilities leave women significantly time-poorer compared to men. Women's time-poverty worsens when the burden of simultaneous care work is taken into account. In addition, due to multitasking, the work tends to be more taxing. The examination of determinants of time-poverty shows that common measures of individual economic power, such as assets and education, do not necessarily affect the time-poverty faced by women.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Prof. Gunseli Berik, Prof. Codrina Rada and Prof. Rudiger von Arnim for their guidance in securing funding for this research. Their valuable feedback and comments from two anonymous referees on the earlier draft of this paper is greatly appreciated.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Contrary to the income-poverty measure, for time-poverty, individuals who fall above the poverty line are considered time-poor, as they are working more than what is considered a reasonable limit.
2 Livelihood activities also include subsistence farming, paid employment, and self-employment.
3 The methodology is explained in Appendix.
4 Lack of relevant data restricts this kind of analysis.
5 I interviewed each woman alone in order to prevent any bias that may occur in the presence of the husband.
6 During the field work, I observed that there is considerable variation in the type of economic activities undertaken. For example, some days an individual may work on his/her own farm and in the next few days work as paid agricultural labor.
7 In the survey and FGDs, women themselves pointed to the sheer exhaustion they face in caring for a child under the age 4.
8 “The maximum amount of time an individual can work each week over an extended period of time and maintain his/her well-being is approximated to be 87 hours per week” (Vickery Citation1977: 32–33).
9 Bardasi and Wodon (Citation2010) study uses a poverty line of 70.5 hours/week or 10 hours/day, while in this study, I use a poverty line of 12 hours/day. Therefore, the difference in estimates of time poverty may be greater if similar poverty line is used.
10 There is no reporting of separate estimates of time poverty for rural men and rural women.
11 I use work intensity measure as a dependent variable in OLS model to test the robustness of these results. The results are more or less similar in terms of statistical significance and sign of all independent variables except for number of infants.
12 The results are similar because according to both definitions of total work time, the time-poverty incidence remains the same for men.
13 As indicated in Section 6.1, women simultaneously undertake care work along with leisure, which according to definition 2 of work time substantially increases overall work burden.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Diksha Arora
Diksha Arora is a PhD student in the Department of Economics, University of Utah. Her research interests include time-use analysis, gender in agriculture development and land-grabs in developing countries.