Picture this: A woman in a rural Indian household wakes up before dawn, tends to her kitchen garden, feeds the chickens, prepares breakfast, and gets her children ready for school-all before the sun fully rises. If someone asked her what she does for work, chances are she’d say, “I’m just a housewife.” But is she really not working? This disconnect between what women actually do and what gets recognized as “work” is at the heart of a significant economic blind spot: subsidiary productive work.
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The hidden economy of small-scale activities
In households where wage-earning is the primary source of income, many families engage in what economists call subsidiary activities. These are the small-scale productive tasks that happen alongside the main occupation-maintaining a kitchen garden, raising a few chickens, keeping a goat for milk, or growing vegetables for household consumption. Research shows that approximately 21.6 percent of rural Indian women are engaged in poultry and dairy work, and a similar percentage in free collection of fruits and vegetables, yet these contributions often go unrecognized in official statistics.
The challenge lies in how we measure and value work. When the main breadwinner brings home a regular paycheck from factory work or daily labor, these supplementary activities seem marginal by comparison. The hours spent weeding the vegetable patch or collecting fodder for livestock appear insignificant next to formal employment. As a result, they’re frequently dismissed-not counted in economic surveys, not included in GDP calculations, and certainly not acknowledged as “real work.”
Why subsidiary work becomes invisible
The invisibility of subsidiary productive work isn’t just about economics-it’s deeply intertwined with how we conceptualize household labor. Women globally carry out at least two and a half times more unpaid household and care work than men, and in India, this disparity is even more pronounced. When a woman tends to chickens or maintains a garden, the line between “household chores” and “productive economic activity” becomes blurred.
Statistical systems struggle with this ambiguity. Studies have documented the fuzziness of the boundary between domestic work and unpaid economic work that leads to systematic mismeasurement of women’s contributions. A woman who spends three hours daily caring for poultry and growing vegetables is creating real economic value-she’s reducing household expenses and contributing to food security. Yet because these activities happen within the domestic sphere and don’t generate cash income, they’re often categorized under “household duties” rather than “work.”
The measurement challenge
Official employment surveys typically ask respondents about their “usual principal activity”-the main thing they spend most of their time doing. For many women in wage-earning households, the answer would be domestic duties, even if they spend significant time on productive subsidiary activities. The survey design itself contributes to undercounting women’s economic participation.
Consider the classification codes used in India’s National Sample Survey. Activities like poultry farming, vegetable cultivation, and livestock care are grouped under codes for domestic duties when they’re done for household consumption. This means women engaged in these economically valuable activities aren’t counted as workers in official statistics, making their contributions statistically invisible.
The perception problem: women’s own assessment
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of recognizing subsidiary productive work is that women themselves often don’t identify these activities as “work.” This isn’t about false consciousness or lack of awareness-it reflects deeply internalized social norms about what constitutes legitimate economic activity.
When a statistical enumerator arrives to conduct an employment survey, a woman might report that she “doesn’t work” because she views her subsidiary productive activities as simply an extension of her household responsibilities. Growing vegetables, raising chickens, or maintaining a small dairy operation aren’t seen as separate economic activities deserving recognition-they’re just part of being a good homemaker and family caretaker.
The social construction of work
This perception is reinforced by the broader social context. In many communities, a woman’s primary identity is tied to her role as wife, mother, and homemaker. Economic activities that happen within the household premises or are oriented toward family consumption don’t challenge this identity-they’re absorbed into it. Women in India spend an average of almost six hours daily on household work, significantly more than women in other developing countries, and this time burden shapes how all household-oriented activities are perceived.
The problem is compounded by the lack of monetary exchange. When a woman sells eggs from her chickens at the market, that’s more likely to be recognized as economic activity. But when she uses those same eggs to feed her family, reducing the need to purchase food, the economic value disappears from view-even though the household benefit is identical.
Why this matters beyond statistics
The invisibility of subsidiary productive work has consequences that extend far beyond data collection. When women’s economic contributions go unrecognized, several things happen. First, their bargaining power within households diminishes. If a woman’s work isn’t seen as “real work,” her voice in household decisions may carry less weight.
Second, policy interventions miss the mark. Development programs designed to increase women’s economic participation may overlook the fact that many women are already economically active-they just need support to expand or improve their existing productive activities. More than 70 million Indian women perform economically productive work without receiving wages, representing an enormous untapped resource for economic development.
Third, the undervaluation of this work perpetuates gender inequalities. When subsidiary productive activities aren’t counted or valued, there’s little incentive to invest in making them more productive or less time-consuming. Women remain stuck in low-productivity activities without access to training, technology, or resources that could enhance their contributions.
Breaking the cycle of invisibility
Recognizing subsidiary productive work requires changes at multiple levels. Statistical systems need better methodologies for capturing diverse forms of economic activity, particularly those that don’t involve cash transactions. Survey questions should be redesigned to probe more deeply into time use and productive activities, even when they’re integrated with household work.
But beyond measurement, there needs to be a broader cultural shift in how we value different types of work. The kitchen garden that supplies vegetables year-round, the few chickens that provide eggs and occasional meat, the goat that produces milk-these aren’t trivial hobbies or simple household chores. They’re economic activities that contribute significantly to household welfare and food security.
What do you think? How might your perception change if you started viewing household food production and small-scale animal husbandry as legitimate economic work? What would it take for society to fully recognize and support women’s subsidiary productive activities?
References
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0488-2
- https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/csw61/redistribute-unpaid-work
- https://www.ashoka.edu.in/research/invisibility-care-and-cultural-barriers-the-size-and-shape-of-womens-work-in-india/
- https://inbreakthrough.org/ignored-unpaid-work/
- https://www.dataforindia.com/women-and-work/
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