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Research Articles

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2026): OPJU Business Review

Valuation of Women’s Unpaid Household Work: A Rural-Urban Analysis

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63825/opjubr.2026.5.1.954
Submitted
4 February 2026
Published
11 July 2026

Abstract

Our  society as a whole always expects women to perform all the household chores and still take the secondary role to that of a men who is  the breadwinner; but within that household, the woman is serving all the household members which hinders her opportunity to grow and be skilled, which in turn lead to gender inequality in a long-run.in this paper we have tried to calculate the value of unpaid household works of women across rural and urban area (with their other demographic features) of Bargarh district, Odisha, India. Then we have compared both the values, and we found that the value of unpaid household work is more in rural area and they devote more time and effort to perform these activities. For women to be educated or skilled which is a major factor of their empowerment first they need to reduce the time they are devoting for unpaid domestic and care works. Actually, government should take some steps for this; like- providing water and fuel facilities, providing creche and day care centers (as doing work with small babies makes the task more challenging taking more tome) and so on.

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