With the ongoing pandemic and economic slowdown, the Union Budget 2022 is of distinct importance and as the countdown started, there are expectations from every section. For tackling the negative impact of the pandemic, currently, the Government of India (GOI) is emphasising on economic recovery, but the recovery plan itself lacks a gender lens. To date, special measures for women are missing from GOI’s economic responses to the pandemic when India has a Female Finance Minister; Apart from that, when women require the policy supports the most, the GOI allocated lesser budget to the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) (18.5% decline between 2021-22). The ongoing pandemic as well as the economic slowdown exposed the pre-existing fault-lines and hit some sections harder than others. The existing body of evidence suggests that the pandemic further worsened the existing inequalities for women, disproportionately affected women’s economic and productive lives, increased the burden of unpaid care, and leave them exposed to acute adversities with inadequate financial security.

As per the State of Working India Report 2021, compared to 7% of men, 47% of women lost their jobs and did not return to work by the end of December 2020. As per the PLFS Quarterly 2021, the female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) had dropped to 21.2% in March 2021 as against 21.9% in the year-ago period. However, the female unemployment rate has increased to 11.8% in March 2021 as against 10.6% in the year-ago period. The situation is even worse for women in the informal sector. Between March and April 2021, 80% of job losses are accounted for rural Indian women in the informal sector. Apart from that, the pre-pandemic studies showed that women in India already do almost 9.8 times more unpaid work than Indian men (nearly 6 hours a day); Dalberg estimated that during the pandemic, women’s unpaid work got increased by 30%. Due to the gendered division of labour to perform unpaid care work in family, the burden of unpaid work falls disproportionately on women and this inequality has a direct correlation with participation in the formal economy. With the increased unpaid care work & adverse economic situation, the pandemic badly hurt Indian women and push them further to be out of the labour market, who may find it harder to return.

Unpaid care work is an important aspect of economic activity and is the crucial “hidden engine” for the wellbeing of the economy. But it is mostly invisible, undervalued, and unaccounted; the economic analysis, strategies, and policy formulations do not acknowledge the existence of unpaid care work in the form of economic production of goods. As per International Labour Organisation (ILO), if unpaid care work to be valued based on the minimum wage, It would amount to 9% cent of global GDP (US$11 trillion) and unpaid care work is one of the main barriers for women to be in the labour force because the majority of women are moving into the domain of ‘domestic duties’ in the Indian context. The existing body of evidence do suggest that carrying-out unpaid care work in the family in form of cooking, cleaning, fetching water, and firewood collections pushed women further to withdraw themselves from the workforce, which contributes far less to household income.

In this situation, this is high time that economic policies should address the unequal division of labour in unpaid care responsibilities. Due to this, the Union Budget 2022 should go beyond mere allocations towards women and should address issues like unpaid care that have been worsened by the pandemic. In this context, we outline a few proposals. The first step would be reducing unpaid care work by investment in physical infrastructures like access to clean water and clean energy and social infrastructure such as care services i.e., creche facilities.

1. Improve Access to Clean Energy (Ujjwala Scheme): Using LPG for cooking reduced cooking time, enable women to invest the time and effort saved in more productive activities. As per Oxfam Report, in households with access to Ujjwala Scheme, women spent 49 minutes less spent on care work and an hour more on paid work. Since the inception of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), LPG coverage grew at a remarkable speed and reached almost all low-income households (99.5%) by 1st January 2022. As per the latest NFHS-5, 58.6% of households in India are using clean fuel for cooking, which means a significant number of households are unable to have access to clean energy. Despite wide coverage, LPG refills ordered by low-income households have been constantly declining in recent years because the LPG price has doubled in 7 years and despite subsidisation, the cost is significantly high for poor households. The GOI may consider providing further subsidies to women or reducing LPG cylinder costs to decrease the care burden and incentivise women’s use of LPG.

2. Improve Access to Clean Water (Jal Jeevan Mission): The recent time use survey 2019 shows that women spend on average up to 35 minutes daily to fetch water for households. Having provided a steady source of the water supply has immense potential in reducing gender differences in employment, with women benefitting significantly from access to pipe water in the house. As per an Oxfam report, in households with access to the government’s National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP), women spent 22 minutes less per day on an average on care work and 60 minutes per day more on paid work. To date, 46.06% of households have access to tap water connections. The GOI should improve the provisioning of continuous piped water supply to households for drinking and other purposes have the potential to reduce women’s burden through increased allocation to Jal Jeevan Mission, particularly for rural households. At the same time, the GOI should converge Swatch Bharat Mission and JJM.

3. Improve Access to Care Facilities: Investments in and expansion of care services for children have the potential to retain more women in the labour force. The GOI should provide budgetary support for universalisation of childcare facilities by setting up of new Anganwadi Centres cum Crèches in this financial year. The timings of the crèches should be designed to overlap with women’s working hours as far as possible. It will enable women to take up economically productive work. The MWCD has to intervene proactively for expanding crèche facilities across all workplaces.

As the country is on the economic recovery path, the GOI should play an important role to ensure that women do not get left behind and their expectations meet too, like others. Women of this nations are now looking forward to the Union Budget 2022 with hopes that the “hidden engine” receive due recognition in the economic policy formulation. We must not lose the improvements made in women's empowerment in the last few decades on the account of the pandemic.