In many rural households across India, a woman wakes before dawn to fetch water, collect firewood, prepare meals, and tend to livestock-all before heading to the fields. Yet when asked about her occupation, she might simply say, “I don’t work.” This paradox lies at the heart of one of the most persistent challenges in understanding women’s economic contribution: the invisibility of their work, especially in households with limited resources.
Table of Contents
Understanding the low asset base
When we talk about a low asset base, we’re referring to households with minimal landholdings or livestock-families surviving on marginal plots of less than one hectare or those who are completely landless. In India, over half of agricultural labor households don’t own any land, while many others possess only marginal holdings insufficient for subsistence. Imagine trying to build wealth when you don’t own the primary asset in your field of work-it creates a vicious cycle where families remain perpetually dependent on precarious income sources.
In these resource-constrained households, the total productive work input tends to be small. There isn’t enough land to cultivate substantial crops for the market, nor enough cattle to generate significant dairy income. Everything produced is barely sufficient for the family’s immediate consumption, with little or nothing left over to sell.
The invisibility problem in subsistence economies
Here’s where women’s work becomes particularly invisible. In subsistence-oriented households, women perform countless tasks that directly contribute to family survival: weeding crops, feeding animals, processing grains, preserving vegetables, and collecting fuel and fodder. However, because these contributions are intermittent rather than continuous, and because the output never reaches the market, their work easily gets lost in the overall reckoning of household productivity.
Think of a woman who spends two hours in the morning milking the family’s single cow, another hour collecting firewood, and then works sporadically throughout the day in the family’s small vegetable patch between her domestic duties. None of these tasks produces a marketable surplus. The milk is consumed by the family, the firewood fuels the cooking stove, and the vegetables supplement meals. Because nothing is sold, nothing is counted. Because her work is fragmented across multiple small tasks rather than concentrated in one visible activity, it becomes nearly impossible to measure or recognize.
Small contributions, large oversights
The absolute size of women’s contribution in low-asset households may indeed be small when measured in market terms. If a household cultivates only half an acre and owns one goat, the economic value of what women produce through their labor on that land and with that animal appears negligible in monetary calculations. But this is precisely the trap that perpetuates invisibility.
Consider that in India, about 70 percent of women workers are associated with farm activities that are informal in nature with little or no economic remuneration or social recognition. These women spend significant time on activities like processing agricultural products for self-consumption, collecting free goods such as water and fuel, and maintaining kitchen gardens-all essential for household survival but excluded from official economic accounts.
The compounding effect of housekeeping work
What makes women’s productive labor even more invisible is its seamless blending with housekeeping responsibilities. A woman doesn’t just work in the field and then come home to rest. She works in the field while simultaneously managing meal preparation, childcare, elderly care, and household maintenance. Research shows that in rural India’s agricultural communities, women work approximately 3,485 hours per year-significantly more than men’s 1,200 hours and even more than the 1,000+ hours that bullocks work on a farm.
Because women’s subsistence production work is interwoven with their domestic duties, it becomes nearly impossible to separate or measure each component. When a woman shells peas while supervising her children, or when she weeds the vegetable garden while keeping an eye on the cooking pot, which activity should be counted? This simultaneity and fragmentation make her productive contributions appear less significant than they actually are.
The statistical blind spot
Our measurement systems compound this invisibility. The Indian National Sample Survey Organization places women engaged in processing primary goods and collecting free goods under “domestic duties and allied activities” rather than recognizing them as workers. This classification actively erases their economic contribution from workforce statistics and policy considerations.
A woman who spends hours daily collecting firewood for cooking is providing an essential service-one that would cost money if purchased. Similarly, a woman who processes grain, preserves vegetables, or maintains a kitchen garden is producing real value. Yet because these activities don’t generate cash income or marketable surplus, they remain unaccounted for in economic calculations.
Breaking the cycle of invisibility
Recognizing women’s work in low-asset households isn’t just about fairness-it’s about understanding the true economic dynamics of poverty and subsistence. When we fail to see and value this work, we make several critical errors in our policy and development approaches.
First, we underestimate the actual work burden on women, leading to programs and policies that ignore their time poverty and physical exhaustion. Second, we miss opportunities to support and enhance their productivity through appropriate technologies, training, and resources. Third, we perpetuate the notion that these women “don’t work,” which affects everything from their self-perception to their access to credit, social security, and decision-making power within their families.
Organizations like the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) have pioneered approaches that recognize small-scale women farmers by creating direct market linkages and paying them fair prices at their doorsteps-rates that are 20 to 30 percent better than traditional middlemen offer. These initiatives demonstrate that when women’s work is recognized and properly valued, it transforms not just their economic status but their entire household’s wellbeing.
The path forward
Addressing the invisibility of women’s work in low-asset households requires multiple approaches. We need better measurement tools that can capture intermittent, fragmented, and subsistence-oriented work. We need policies that recognize unpaid productive work as legitimate economic activity deserving of support and protection. And we need to challenge the deep-rooted assumptions that equate “real work” only with market-oriented, cash-generating activities.
Perhaps most importantly, we need to acknowledge that the women working in these marginal economic spaces are not peripheral to our economy-they are its foundation, ensuring that millions of families survive even when they have almost nothing.
What do you think? How can we better recognize and support the invisible labor of women in subsistence economies? What changes would make the biggest difference in acknowledging their economic contributions?
References
- https://agriculture.institute/indian-agricultural-development/economic-challenges-agricultural-labourers-india/
- https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Field Office ESEAsia/Docs/Publications/2018/07/Invisible Work and Invisible Workers.pdf
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0488-2
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/03/02/india-economy-jobs-women-agriculture/
- https://farmingfirst.org/2022/11/building-the-resilience-of-smallholder-women-farmers-in-india/
Leave a Reply