v

Women, Work and HouseholdElectrification in Rural India

We must not believe, certainly, that a change in woman's econ­omic condition alone is enough to transform her, though thisfactor has been and remainsthe basic factor in her evolution;

Simonede Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Every public policy initiative must necessarily consider the dif­ferential incidence of its impact. Who would be most affected by

the policy and in what way? Such considerations lead to questions asto what obstacles might arise to its full implementation and whatsome of the unintended consequences might be. This in tum promptsa consideration of backup or auxiliary policies that need to be in placeto facilitate implementation and contain unintended undesirable ef­fects.

If the question of incidence were posed to the policy of massiveexpansion of household electrification in rural India, the answer, itseems, would clearly point in a particular direction. On the one hand,to the extent that electricity would substitute for other rural energysources, it would eliminate or drastically reduce household demandfor oil, firewood, dung and wastes. In the case of the last three inparticular, this would greatly eliminate the need to 'collect' thesefuels, which is how most of the fuel in most rural households isacquired. By all accounts, the principal group of rural workers present­ly expending time and effort in the gathering of fuel in the non­monetized sphere is rural women, assisted on occasion by children.Electrification, then, stands to substantially eliminate this task fromtheir chores.

In addition, the principal end-use of energy in rural India is cook-

r

i

1i

i~

t

\,

Women and Work • 145

ing. This again is an activity that is almost exclusively the domain ofable-bodied rural women in the normal working age group. Elec­trification of cooking and related daily activities would significantlychange their nature. Finally, household electrification can be expectedto have a major impact on household production in general, in whichwomen are the principal actors. It appears, therefore, that in the eventof full electrification at the household level, rural women stand to bemost affected in terms of the types of work they perform and the natureof these tasks, both from the perspective of the acquisition of fuel aswell as that of their end-use. Moreover, gathering fuel, cooking ofdaily meals, and other household work are unpaid work. Extensivehousehold electrification, then, could be expected to have a significantimpact on a particular set of rural workers, adult women of workingage, and on a particular kind of work;' ~Inpaid labour.

The idea that women's activities are central to basic issues of foodand fuel has been recognized in some quarters, such as internationalbodies concerned with appropriate technologies and women in dev­elopment. For instance, a UNIDO working group on rural energyrequirements observed in its report that '[i]t is the women of thedeveloping world who are" most concerned with the problems ofenergy supply and use, because it is they who do the cooking and inmost countries, gather the fuel. Furthermore, it is usually the womenwho draw and carry the water for domestic use. 'I

In the higher echelons of policy formulation in this area, however,there is no explicit consideration of these issues. Indeed, scholars andprac:titioners in the field of development who take an explicit interestin the economic condition of women are pretty much unanimous intheir verdict that the poverty, drudgery, illiteracy, ill-health, and ex­ploitation of rural women are typically not the target of developmentplans, that this tendency persists because women are largely shut outof the development process, and that even policies that may have madea difference fail because they are not tuned to the contingencies thatwould be relevant.

Those designing policies are largely unaware of the dimensions and extentof rural women's work, or they choose not to see it The result of thatignorance or neglectis disregard of theproblem andomission of kindsofpolicieswhichwould be relevant. Examination of what women are actually

1 UNlDO Draft Report, 'Energy for Rural Requirements', 1978, cited by Irene Tinker inDauber and Cain, 1981.

146· Money, Energy and Welfare

doing with their time is thereforenot simply a statistical exercise,but rathera first step towardsolutions. Knowledge can be a powerful tool, even in theface of wilful ignorance.2

This chapter explores the relation between household electrifica­tion and female labour in rural India in two stages. First, it reviewsthree major intellectual approaches to female labour, the neo-classical,Marxian, and feminist, and considers each approach in the light of thesignificance of a major technological transformation such as elec­trification. It then considers empirical evidence from electrified ruralareas in four states in India, comparing female labour related to ruralenergy acquisition and use in electrified and non-electrified house-holds. ...

ANALYTICAL APPROACHES TO WOMEN AND WORK

1. TIlE NEO-CLASSICAL TRADmON

The distinctive features of the neo-classical approach to householdeconomics can broadly be placed in two categories. In the first cat­egory is the standard assumption of a joint utility function for mem­bers of the household and all the implications that go with it.3 Thehousehold is assumed to be a single decision-making unit maximizinga utility function common to all its members," Predictably, this ap­proach papers over the potential for conflict among household mem­bers and ignores the differential apportionment of costs and benefitsamong the components that are taken to comprise the joint utilityfunction. In the second category fall certain assumptions about thebehaviour of individual actors within the household (as opposed totheir behaviour in the 'market'), which I further distinguish between

2 Intemation~j'Labour Office, 1980, p. 9.3 A succinct expression of a joint utility function in the patriarchal context is to be foundin the Bengali dictum 'Patir punye satir punya' (The devoted wife's merit lies in the meritof her husband), to which Tagore added the immortal aside 'Nohile kharach barey' (Elsethe expense goes up)--clearly a binding constraint Note the similarity to James Mill onwomen: ' .•. the Interests of all of whom Is Involved either In that of their fathers or inthat of their husbands.' (Article on Govemment, 1825, reprinted in Bell and Offen, 1983).4 The precise configuration of household decision-making process by which this comesabout may vary, as discussed by Amartya Sen, 1983. However, the result is the same.

I

.. 'Women and Work • 147

those related to 'altruism' and those termed 'traditional behaviour'.These features of behaviour, with or without the joint utility function,would explain divisions of labour within the household or decisionsregarding the supply of labour for wages outside the family.

The Altruistic Motivation

To assume altruistic behaviour within the household is to banish thehousehold from the rules that supposedly guide market behaviour,namely self-interested maximization of profit and utility in productionand consumption respectively. Until recently, this usually meant thebanishment of intra-household behaviour from scholarly examinationas well. The assumption did not allow the division of labour or sharingof resources within the household to be explained by 'rational' self-in­terest as in the market. Rather, from Adam Smith downwards, themotivation within the household was taken to be something quali­tatively quite different indeed, perhaps in selflessness or 'altruism'.Women were frequently assumed to be particularly prone to altruismand therefore unsuited for market activity. In fact, the outside worldwas defined as a corrupting force which would taint women and in tumdeprive men of benefiting from their ennobling influence."

More recently, economists have felt less insecure about lookingwithin the household for analysis, but this has on occasion led to somecurious results. Gary Becker, in his Treatise on the Family, makesextensive use of the standard tools of economic analysis to explainfamily relations, using the concept of comparatige advantage, forexample, to explain household division of labour.~()wever,his com­parison of market and household behaviour is ba~gso~ the notion thatindividuals act according to self-interest in the 1'I),~~~~t, but accordingto altruism within the family." At first glance, ~~~I~~P analysis maysuggest that individuals are locked in a permaq~~~'v,~ondition of DrJekyll and Mr Hyde in terms of their behaviourjpf;lv~ market and inthe family. A closer scrutiny, however, revealsthl!:~~I~~ is not the caseat all. Becker's argument is that even a single alt~Ii\i;member of thefamily can lead to the others behaving like'~altfU'i••ven if they are

S This protective argument is a typical justification for the secll.!~~wlpf women in manysocieties. In India, the idea is pervasive to this day, in everylhi~~ifrom discouragingoutside employment for women to denying them a career in politic~lllnd public life.6 Becker, 1981.

148· Money, Energy and Welfare

actually self-seeking. He finds this to be true not because an individualundergoes a metamorphosis in terms of motivation every time hereturns home, but because in his model altruism is the efficient routeto family utility maximization, just as self-interest is efficient in themarket.

This is precisely the kind of thinking on the part of rational choicetheorists that Jon Elster finds so objectionable in his discussion ofaltruism. While noting the general consensus among economists todaythat concern for others may well be part of an individual's utilityfunction, he points out that this acknowledgement of possible altruismhas led to an attempt to absorb altruistic behaviour into the generalframework of self-interest. Indeed, 'the economist has a moment oftriumph each time he succeeds in showing up the rational logic ofsome behaviour previously believed to be irrational, and I also thinkhe has the same feeling when an apparently altruistic behaviour isshown to be a particularly subtle form of self-interest. '7 Elster con­cludes that this tendency is partly due to preferring the simple to thecomplex, but partly also due to the assumption that altruism is notnormal human nature and the further assumption that if it explains anybehaviour, then it itself needs to be explained.

Elster rejects Becker's model since he feels that an altruist nolonger behaves altruistically towards persons he or she recognizes tobe closet egoists. In fact, the Becker model, and its examples ofallowances and bequeaths (from an altruistic parent to potentially'rotten' kids, for instance) can probably be better understood in termsof power, control and dependence within the family."

In terms of the Beckerian anal ysis, though, the division oflabour inthe household that allots unpaid housework to women is the rationaloutcome of comparative advantage and the network of utility func­tions that compel even the super-egoist to behave harmoniously to­wards the augmentation of family income/utility. The woman choosesto remain at home and perform unpaid housework because her valua­tion of her productivity at home, especially in the child-bearing age, isgreater than what the market wage would have to offer. It is in herinterest to maximize family income, because her own share is tied toit. While not everyone.agrees with specific aspects of Becker's analy-

7 Elster, 1984, p, 142.8 Some scholars have tried to develop models of reciprocal altruism, though signs ofeventual self-interest remain. See the discussion in Elster, 1984, p. 145.

Women and Work • 149

sis, the general approach of comparative advantage and specializationis widely prevalent in the literature on the supply of women's labour."The logic has proved so compelling that the joint utility assumption isretained even when studying discrimination within the household,such as discrimination against female childrenpo Apart from treatinghousehold members such as children as investment, which some findinappropriate, this approach suggests that the family as a whole con­curs in the 'rationality' of discriminatory decisions.

The comparative advantage argument relies heavily on the assump­tion of a strong complementarity between child bearing and childrearing. Even though women in the dual role of child bearing andrearing remains the most common form of actual behaviour, the notionof an inherent complementarity between child bearing and child rear­ing has been seriously challenged by feminists and by the concept of'parenting' in recent years. However, as the ongoing furore over the'mommy track' in America indicates, the debate is far from over. Inany event, in our case, it is easier to fit the task of unpaid cooking inthe model of comparative advantage of women at home than unpaidfuel gathering. For the latter, women either have to abandon theirchildren for hours, or take them along, which they sometimes do, ontreks that by no account sound like family picnics.

One important element of the neo-classical tradition suggests thatin the event of a transformation of the economic environment, forinstance with the advent of electrification, there is the possibility of areorganization of family division of labour and resources to adjust tothe new situation. Under the Beckerian model, the question of theeffect of electrification on female labour supply poses an interestingdilemma. Would this technological change induce a greater or lesserparticipation in outside employment? Theoretically, household elec­trification may be interpreted as technological progress that enhancesthe productivity of household activities. In other words, it is possibleto achieve the same level of household 'output' with less labour. If thevalue ofwomen's time at the margin is thus lowered, market participa­tion may become more attractive. If, however, electrification inducesa higher level of 'output', this effect would be offset. This is particular­ly true if the wage a woman would command in the market, alreadylower than that for men, either remained unchanged or lagged behind

9 See for instance Gronau, 1973.10 Rosenzweig and Schultz, 1982.

150. Money, Energy and Welfare

the productivity growth in household production that would accom­pany household electrification.

While the theoretical answer is not conclusive, there is considerableempirical evidence, to which we will return later in the chapter, thatthe 'output' effect is quite significant after household electrification,leading not only to higher levels of 'output' in household production,through the creation of new tasks, for instance, but a qualitativechange in the 'product' itself, through changing standards of house­keeping.

Several other factors contribute to the complexity of female laboursupply. Gronau pointed out earlier that the decision faced by womenis not a trade-off between labour and leisure, but among householdlabour, outside labour, and leisure. Empirical research has also shownthat for women, the choice between the two kinds of labour is not adichotomous one. Most women who are employed in the marketcontinue to shoulder the responsibility of housework, leading to the'double day', rather than a discrete binomial choice based on compara­tive advantage. Recent analysis in the neo-classical tradition has

.claimed, therefore, that market employment of women has left womenworse off than before. Finally, empirical work by Bardhan on ruralwomen in India found that female market labour supply was relativelyunresponsive to wage-rates, though there was some evidence of atleast local backward bending supply curves for the set of all adultwomen (three-quarters of whom were primarily housewives). Othersocio-economic variables, such as caste, marital status, seasonality,village unemployment rate, number of dependents or male membersof the household seemed to explain female market labour supplybetter."

The Constraints of 'Tradition'

Contrary to the notion that behaviour is essentially flexible and re­sponsive to changes in the environment, the assumption of 'tradi­tional' behaviour implies a certain rigidity in adjusting to changes inthe environment. Traditionally (so to speak) a sociological approachto explaining behaviour, the binding influence of norms or customshas become a frequent resort of apologists for failed public policies aswell. While the major debate on this theme has been waged over the

11 Bardhan, 1979.

Women and Work • 151

'rationality' of the peasant, familiar chords may be heard in thedomain of rural energy as well.'? The policy remedy implied in mostcases of technological change is increased public relations. The ration­al choice school, on the other hand, would look in such cases formaterial reasons why the rejection of a new technology made perfectsense from the point of view of the household acting 'rationally'.Make it cheap enough, reliable enough, and give it time enough, andthere is bound to be a response.

Elster tries to bridge the gap between the pure sociologist and thepure economist by proposing that values and norms probably informpreferences, which in turn determine choices. Branding a behaviourirrationally traditional may be due to a misreading of the goals of theactors, or the complexities of short-term versus long-term strategies.However, economists can sometimes stretch the search for rationalityto implausible lengths. Moreover, Elster suggests, sometimes be­haviour can in fact be explained by tradition-bound rigidity: 'Inertiamay be a rational way of coping with a too rapidly changing environ­ment, but it may also be just what it is: inertia.t '?

The notion of traditional behaviour puts the division of labourbetween men and women in the household or between paid and unpaidwork down to a value-system which does not change as the environ­ment changes. By this model electrification would at best be slow inchanging the existing structure of work, if at all. We may observe thisrigidity in the slowness in acceptance of household electrification aswell as in no change or slow change in the pattern of work in electrifiedhouseholds as compared to non-electrified ones. While pure sociologyunderestimates the impact of incentive structures, pure economicsmisses most contextual constraints.

The common thread in most of the ideas about the family, womenand work in this tradition is that women choose their worklivesvoluntarily. Whether one believes that affection reigns inside thefamily, or that women are particularly selfless creatures, or that givena joint utility function women compare what the market has to offerand stay at home, one is led to the logical conclusion that womenfollow what has been called the 'lemming theory' of women and work,

t2 Socio-culturally informed value-systems are taken to be particularly strong in India.Note the eventual reliance on the contribution of persisting caste identities to the failureof India's education policies in Myron Weiner's The Child and the State in India, 1991.13 Elster, 1984, p. 139.

152 - Money, Energy and Welfare

that is, they concentrate on domestic work, unpaid or low-paid jobs,or stay outside the market labour force altogether, out of choice.

2. THE MARXIAN APPROACH

Marxists have come in for as much rebuke from feminist scholarslately as have neo-classical economists for ignoring or masking gen­der related issues in the household. In the case of the Marxist approachit is the preoccupation with class interests that has precluded anexamination of relations within the same class. Family members areassumed to have the same class interests as the (male) wage-earner.Indeed, the emphasis often is on class solidarity within the family,which, ironically, has led some once again to the conclusion thatworking class women choose to stay out of the labour market, this timein order to maximize total wage payment to labour.

The continued existence of working class families has itselfprompted a reappraisal of the Marxian position on family and familylabour. When Marx and Engels declared the family a bourgeois con­cept, constructed solely for the protection of private property, theyalso declared that the family had virtually ceased to exist among theworking class." Their family ties had been 'torn asunder' by modernindustry, their children were treated as articles of commerce, and thebourgeois wife was merely 'an instrument of production'. Whatpassed for family life, in their eyes, was nothing short of prostitution,public and private. In other words, men and women of the proletariatand women of the bourgeoisie were all victims of industrial capi­talism. This so-called family would disappear with the abolition ofprivate property and a 'community ofwomen' would be established tochange the status of women from being mere instruments.

One recent assessment within the Marxian tradition finds the Mar­xian anti-family posture ill-informed." In fact, it asserts that Marx andEngels were just plain wrong to equate family ties with either mono­gamy or property relations. The central argument of this thesis is thatthe persistence of traditional family structures, that is, a network ofsocial relations, among the working classes is actually a visible signof their resistance to capitalist development, which historically has

14 The Communist Manifesto, 1848.IS Humphries, 19n.

..Women and Work -153

witnessed the replacement of social relations by market relations inevery sphere of its influence. Marx perceived in the phenomenon ofworking women and children the process of universal proletarianiza­tion which would dilute the labour power of every individual worker.That, argues Humphries, provides the primary incentive for workersto preserve their family structures in order to maintain a 'familywage'.

Feminist scholars complain that while recent Marxian studies havepointed out differences in the economic and social conditions of menand women, the central dynamic of the tradition is still the exploitationof labour by capital. This fundamental premise leads to the logicalconclusion that women are exploited not by men of their own families,i.e. their own class, but by the ultimate, common exploiter, capital.Some Marxists suggest that it is in capital's interest, for both addition­al surplus value and political stability, that the working class familysurvive. It is not entirely clear how capital would ensure the survivalof the working class family, especially against the countervailingpressure of universal proletarianization. Naturally, all these argumentshave necessitated some embarrassing side-stepping ofglaring cases ofantagonism between men and women of the same class, such as thetrades unions' historical opposition to women in the labour force.

If, as the Manifesto argued, the abolition of private property wouldemancipate women from the status of instruments of production, howexactly were work and rewards going to be apportioned? A few yearsbefore the publication of the Manifesto, Engels had this to say aboutwomen and work:

Very often the fact that a married woman is working does not lead to thecomplete disruption of the home but to a reversal of the normal division oflabour within the family. The wife is the breadwinnerwhileher husbandstaysat home to look after the children and to do the cleaning and cooking. Thishappens very frequently indeed. In Manchester alone there are many hun­dreds of men who are condemned to perform household duties. One may wellimaginethe righteousindignationof the workersatbeing virtuallyturned intoeunuchs ... It deprives the husband of his manhood and the wife of allwomanly qualities.P (Emphasis added).

Indeed, Engels was convinced that family life was 'inevitablydestroyed' if a married woman worked outside the home. He thought

16 Engels, 1892.

154· Money, Energy and Welfare

working women not only neglected their children, but became indif­ferent to them, leading generally to 'universal decadence'.

Two things are clear from Engels' account. First, in his view, thewoman's place is definitely in the home. This is the 'normal' divisionof labour. Second, marriage is a relationship of dominance of manover woman. Such attitudes would squarely place Engels among thehigh priests of patriarchy. However, some signs ofself-doubt about thedominance of one party over the other in marriage has somewhatredeemed him in the eyes of some critics. 'We shall have to accept,'muses Engels, 'that so complete a reversal of the role of the two sexescan be due only to some radical error in the original relationshipbetween men and women. If the rule of the wife over the husband-anatural consequence of the factory system-is unnatural, then the ruleof the husband over the wife must also have been unnatural.'

Stronger denunciations of the enslavement of women under thepatriarchal order are to be found in The Origins of Family, PrivateProperty and State, a later work. Somewhere between 'barbaroustimes' and the rise of the patriarchal family, wrote Engels, '[t]heoverthrow of mother right (sic) was the world historic defeat of thefemale sex.' The conflict of interests between men and women isidentified as the first class antagonism and the first class oppression ofwomen by men. The solution suggested by Engels to end the enslave­ment of women is at first glance the very thing that was taken to resultin universal decadence: work in public industry. '[T]he first conditionfor the emancipation of women is the re-introduction of the entirefemale sex into public industry; and [that] this again demands that thequality possessed by the individual family of being the economic unitof society be abolished.'

This recommendation actually does not contradict his ideas aboutthe natural division of labour. Rather, Engels glorifies the 'old, com­munistic household', where, he argues, housework by women was asmuch a public and social industry as men's work. It was only in thepatriarchal family and even more so in the monogamous individualfamily that housework became only a private service. 'The wifebecame the first domestic servant, pushed out ofparticipation in socialproduction.' Engels perceived the opportunities for public work undermodern industry to be in conflict with women's household duties,making work and home incompatible and mutually exclusive. Atwork, she was at the mercy of modern capital. 'In the family, he (theman) is the bourgeois; the wife represents the proletariat.'

Women and Work • 155

In the Marxian view, the destruction of existing economic relationswould automatically usher in equality between the sexes. In thisscheme of things the state would take over some of the 'housework",such as child care or communal dining, but it is not clear to what extentwomen would have the same opportunities as men, given Engels'ideas about the 'natural' division of labour. The scheme was tried inthe Soviet Union after 1917, but was criticized by Trotsky for havingsignally failed to achieve its ends. The return of working men tohome-cooking and the women to their pots and pans was due, accord­ing to Trotsky, to the acute poverty of the proletariat and its 'lack ofculture' .t'

Technological changes such as electrification within the existingstructures of the economy and the patriarchal family, therefore, areexpected to have no real impact on critical economic relations. Ifhousehold electrification lightened some of the more onerous aspectsof shopping and housework, or even changed ~ome of the occupationalstructures, in the Marxian view it still would not alter the fundamentalconflicts between classes and therefore between the genders. Giventhe existing economic relations, if electrification should in any waycontribute to an increase in the supply of female labour outside thehome, working women would merely be stepping out of the frying paninto the fire. .

3. TIlE FEMINIST CRmQUE

The fundamental demand of feminist scholars has been to placegender interests on the same level of analysis as family interests orclass interests. Their focus is on the unequal share of power between

. men and women both in household divisions of labour and in decisionsregarding the supply of labour. Feminists usually find one hero in eachof the previous two traditions, J.S. Mill and Engels, respectively,though the latter is only half a hero due to the dilution of his ownarguments. Mill is lauded especially for his attack on the joint utilityfunction argument made, among others, by the senior Mr Mill some­time before. The most critical part of his argument, I believe, is inpointing out that the characterizations of women being paraded asjustifications for their condition are typically made or all unrepre-

17 Trotsky, cited in Bell and Offen, 1983.

156· Money, Energy and Welfare

sented groups," Engels is credited for at least acknowledging that thecondition of women was explained not by their being more altruistic,but less powerful than men, and for attempting to trace the historicaldevelopment of this subordination. Indeed, the argument that womenwere 'self-sacrificing' not because of their nature, but because theyhad no choice, dependent as they were on the men for their daily bread,had appeared early in the feminist debate." The appearance of self­sacrifice is arguably a rational response to conditions of extremevulnerability!

Feminist scholarship has typically focused on the potential con­flicts of interests within the family. Marxist feminists have tried tomodel the process by which exploitation of the working class bycapital would filter down to exploitation of women by working men.2O

Conflict-habituated family behaviour is at present being considered byneo-classicals as well, through the use of game theory, which allowsthem to relax the assumption that the household is a cooperative unit.21

The rejection of the notion that women are more selfless than mennaturally leaves feminists open to the charge of a masculinist bias,which would claim that women are just as selfish as men. Folbre 'andHartmann argue that this is not the feminist position at all. Rather, theyassert that feminist scholarship has the broader implication of chal­lenging the dichotomous debate over altruism and self-interest, homeand the market, women and men, and so on. They expect it to con­tribute towards a more complete theory of economic interests, onewhich includes ideas of cooperation, loyalty, and reciprocity, as wellas self-interest.22

The most significant contribution of feminist scholarship has beenthe effort to gather empirical evidence in support of their positions.This has led to a number of studies on the types of women's work, theirwork hours and wages, and the effect of capitalist development andtechnological changes on women and work. Much of the effort hasserved to illustrate the complexity of analysing gender interests in thecontext of other competing interests such as race or class.

18 J.S. Mill, Speech in the House of Commons, 1869, reprinted in Bell and Offen, 1983.For a discussion of the feminist perspective on gender and economic theory, see Folbreand Hartmann, 1986.19 Charlotte Gilman, Women and Economics, 1898, cited in Folbre and Hartmann, 1986.20 See for instance Folbre, 1982.21 For a recent application In development studies, see Chris Jones, 1983.22Folbre and Hartmann, 1986.

Women and Work • 157

Some interesting and illuminating results of empirical researchover the last fifteen years or so are as follows:

(i) Women form a disproportionate share of the world's poorest.(ii) There is no doubt at all that women carry the overwhelming

burden of domestic work, in all classes and regions. However,there is wide variation in the non-domestic work performed bywomen.

(iii) The effect of capitalist development and development policiesof developing countries on women is ambiguous. While capit­alist development has sometimes opened new opportunitiesfor women and helped them earn both income and someindependence, it has at other times added to their exploitationor even led to a loss of existing economic rights and priv­ileges.P

(iv) It is not advantageous for women to 'specialize' in 'femaleoccupations'. They would earn more if they were in a pre­dominantly male job. In fact, there is evidence of systematic'deskilling' or devaluation of jobs that women enter in largenumbers, e.g. garment industry, secretarial, and clerical jobs.The neo-classical explanation of this phenomenon is that theopportunity cost of labour is reduced, lowering the wage ratesin these industries. The reason why opportunity costs arelower is that the women are drawn from housework, which isunpaid and therefore economically 'un-valued', a premisewhich feminists reject as being based on the original assump­tion that housework is economically unproductive and there­fore not really work.

(v) A large number of studies find that women, whether employedin the 'market' or not, regularly work longer hours than men.Moreover, in Western societies, the introduction of a varietyof 'labour-saving' devices do not appear to have significantlyreduced women's working hours at home. (This will be ex­amined in more detail in the next section.)

23 See for instance Boserup, 1986. See also Madhu Kishwar's work on Ho tribal women,Economic and Political Weekly, January 1987. Nancy Folbre argues that some of theselosses are short-term and would be surpassed by the long-term gains in terms of thereadjustment of sexual divisions of labour (Folbre, 1982),

158· Money, Energy and Welfare

HOUSEHOLD ELECfRIFICATION ANDFEMALELABOUR IN INDIA

'It is the men who do the modem things,' wrote Ester Boserupwistfully in Woman's Role in Economic Development, 'They handleindustrial inputs while women perform the degrading manual jobs;men often. have the task of spreading fertilizer in the fields, whilewomen spread manure; men ride the bicycle and drive the lorry, whilewomen carry headloads, as did their grandmothers. In short, menrepresent modem farming in the village, women represent the olddrudgery. '24

As argued earlier, government cannot dictate household or in­dividual decisions, but it can influence them by creating the righteconomic environment and incentive system. The energy sector haslong been identified as a crucial sector by government, but for reasonsunrelated to women, even though energy has been recognized byscholars of women and development as a key area by which toimprove the economic and health conditions in rural areas because ofits influence on rural women's work and its eventual linkage to foodconsumption.P One possible route to restructuring the existing divi­sions of work between men and women would be to intervene directlyin the ordering of domestic responsibilities. This counsel has notproved popular among governments. The ILO's proposition that thegovernment initiate policies that would encourage men's involvementin household responsibilities was strongly rejected by the Indiangovernment as being unnecessary.P

In arguing for the concept of the family as the locus of a struggleover production and redistribution issues, Hartmann identified thesources of conflict within the household (as distinguished from thosebetween the household and other, larger institutions). The issues inproduction revolved around the questions about who does the house­work and how, and whether women should work for wages outside orfor men inside the home. Issues of redistribution were questions suchas, how should the money be spent, and who decides?" Both sets ofissues can be addressed at least in part by considering the impact ofhousehold electrification. Since we are examining areas officially

24 Boserup, 1986, p. 56.2SInternational Labour Office, 1980, pp. 39-53.26 Ibid., p. 57.27 Hartmann, 1981.

1Women and Work • 159

declared 'electrified', we ought to be able to test whether there aresigns of a significant difference in the work patterns of women in theelectrified households from those in non-electrified households. Wecan also examine the allocation of money income and financingpossibilities to various electrical goods to understand the priorities ofthe decision-makers.

We identify two sets of possible beneficial effects of householdelectrification on women as reflected in their work. (1) Electrificationmay reduce 'drudgery', that is, raise the quality of the conditions ofhousehold work and therefore the quality of women's lives, within theframework of the work they do presently.P This effect is hard tomeasure, but new appliance use related to existing work might be ameasure, as might be time 'saved' in performing a particular task. Toan extent, appliances that raise general comfort levels at home, suchas lights and fans, might also contribute. (2) Electrification maychange the structure of women's work, enabling them to do otherwork, and in particular, paid work outside the household. Convention­al wisdom says that this effect might be measured by the 'labour­saving' aspects of electrification and direct evidence on work outsidethe household.

Let us begin by concentrating on (1) the types of work performedby adult Women in electrified and non-electrified households, (2) thedifferences in time spent by the women in these tasks in electrified andnon-electrified households, and (3) the differences in what can beidentified as housework and outside employment. We test the respon­ses of the women in the sample for differences in types of work andthe time spent on them, and examine the extent to which electrificationcan be held accountable for any differences. We first focus on twomajor sets of activities, fuel gathering and cooking (and related tasks).Let us first consider the whole sample and then the relevant sub­divisions by state, income groups, or occupations.

The sample at hand does not provide any evidence of significanttask-differences between women in electrified and non-electrifiedhouseholds. Roughly the same proportions of each kind of householdreports the same routine activities (See for instance Table 5.2). Part ofthis result may be the restrictions imposed by the task choices in thesurvey." Besides, while there are many choices, only five or six

28 This is usually the more clearly identified expected benefit in the rural electrificationpolicies of many countries.

29 The sets of task choices for male and female adults in the survey are given in the

160· Money, Energy and Welfare

activities are actually recorded for each respondent. On the other hand,the similar distribution of tasks in spite of new exogenous factors inthe environment should not perhaps be altogether surprising. 'She wasa graduatel', wrote Naipaul of the daughter-in-law of the wealthyvillage Patel, '[t]hough lost and modest in the gloom of the kitchen,stooping over the fire and the smoke, she was a graduatelP? Eventhough we cannot find any evidence that electrification has had anyradical impact on the types of work performed by women even in thehousehold, perhaps there are differences in time spent, to which weturn next.

The first eye-opener that the data on India provides with regard togathering firewood is that this is not a daily activity, but a periodicactivity. Clearly, some foraging for twigs or dried leaves may be adaily routine, but the evidence shows that family members go on theseexpeditions, sometimes in groups, and use the wood collected over thenext few days or weeks. This seriously restricts the explanation of thedifferences in time spent with the help of more routine activities. Table5.1 summarizes the average family hours spent on one trip and onaverage over a 3D-day period in electrified and non-electrified house­holds.

. .women and Work • 161

the firewood lasts, the difference between the two kinds of householdswidens significantly. Electrified households, it appears, travel lessfrequently for their fuel needs, even when they collect firewood, sincethe use of collected firewood is significantly lower than in non­electrified households. Given that this is 'women's work', it is pre­sumably the adult females in electrified households who are 'saving'some time. The question is, of course, how much oftheir time it is, andwhat they do with the time saved. In addition, to what extent canelectrification be held accountable for the time differentials?

To derive a picture of the adult woman's working day, we turn tothe responses to daily activities in the sample day. The sample at handdid not elicit responses to particular activities in order, but rather,allowed the respondents to list their daily activities and the time takenon them from a set of choices. Only half a dozen activities are recordedper person. This rules out the possibility of constructing a full measureof a person's working day. One has to assume that the activities chosenby the respondents are the ones most relevant and important to themon the given day. A summary of time taken in various daily activitiesrelated to fuel gathering and cooking is reported in Table 5.2.

TABLE 5.1 Family Time Spent in Firewood CollectionTABLE 5.2 Average Time (mins.) Spent Daily in

Fuel Gathering and Cooking

Electrified households appear to spend almost the same number offamily hours collecting firewood at the last reported collection asnon-electrified households. However, after accounting for how long

appendix for this chapter. Cooking is not offered as an option for men. Note also that onechoice for men is 'other household activities'. The same choice for women is 'otherhousehold duties'.30 Naipaul, 1978.

HouseholdsActivity

Electrified Non-electrified(Total n :: 209) (Total n:: 200)

1. Collect dung 87.35 91.58s :: 66.34, n :: 17 s = 111.07, n:: 19

2. Collect firewood 210 105.56n=1 s = 39.19,n =9

3. Makelunch 110.35 115;07s = 42.57, n = 18 s = 49.34,0 = 140

4. Makedinner 61.67 110.87s = 26.87,n = 18 s = 39.99, n = 23

5. Collect water 61.67 64.56s:: 26, n = 18 s = 30.69, n = 34

6. Make breakfast 62.06 53.12s = 41.44, n :: 109 s = 37.95, n = 101

n = 1610.87hrs7.01 hrs

n =8219.25hrs14.67hrs

Non-electrified

n =127.89hrs3.76hrs

n=6916.9hrs5.9 hrs

Electrified

Household thatcollected-firewoodonly (n = 151)

Average hourslastcollectionAverage hoursper month

Households thatpurchased someandcollected somefirewood (n = 28)

Average hourslast collectionAverage hoursper month

• significantdifference at a = 0.10

162· Money, Energy and Welfare

As was mentioned before, since gathering firewood is not a dailyactivity, very few respondents included this in their account of the day.Of 10 responses, only 1 belonged to an electrified household andreported 210 minutes of firewood collection. The others, all fromnon-electrified houses, reported 105.56 minutes on average of dailyfirewood collection. Responses to other activities are more com­parable. Collecting dung, too, turns out to be a periodic activity, but isa more frequent activity than firewood collection. About 8.8% of thesample reported collecting dung on the given day. Other crucialactivities include the preparation of three meals: the morning meal,lunch, and dinner. Note that not everyone reports three meals a day.This is only partially due to sample design. But by and large, themorning meal takes a little less time to prepare, taking about an houror so, than either of the other two. The related activity examined iscollecting water.

A comparison of electrified and non-electrified households showsthat though in all except one activity the women in electrified house­holds spend slightly less time, there is no statistically significantdifference between women of these households in the time they spendin the collection of dung, in the preparation of any of three possiblemeals, and in collecting water. In the case of preparing the morningmeal, the time reported by electrified households is greater, and almoststatistically significant at a '"' 0.10.

In two other important aspects, however, the electrified and non­electrified households are different. First, electrified households arericher on average, and second, they have a larger family size (residentdependents). So, it might be possible to argue that any labour savingqualities of electrification are negated by a larger family size andperhaps a more elaborate preparation of meals. The morning meal, forinstance, could be of more significance in electrified households

'", Women and Work • 163

because of the income difference, and hence, takes more time toprepare.

Some findings in other countries, such as Joann Vanek's for Ameri­can women, show that certain technological changes in householdsmay have created as much or more work than they saved. A popularexample in the American case is laundry, which was significantlyaffected by technological change in the last fifty years. The introduc­tion of automatic washing machines seems to have increased timespent on laundry, presumably because people wash more clothes moreoften. Technological changes often seem to lead to shifting standards,or the addition of new kinds of work." Electricity in particular canhave many new uses. Respondents in electrified villages in Costa Ricaand Colombia, for example, reported that ironing, some lighting,refrigeration, and other appliance use (including watching television),were energy uses which they could not do without electrification."

In terms of housework versus outside employment, an increase intime spent on housework after electrification might be interpreted inthe neo-classical tradition as a choice made due to increased produc­tivity in household production (of material products or use-values) thatled to higher output levels, if clear trade-offs were being made be­tween labour hours working at home and working outside for wages.A decrease might be interpreted by some as the 'liberating' aspect oflabour-saving devices, which would in the limiting cases improve thequality of life of women and in general increase women's laboursupply to the outside market.

While it is not possible for us to measure the effect on total timespent on all housework (due to sample design), at least in the activitieswe examined, electrification appears to have had no discernible effectin terms of daily tasks and time spent in each. We try to get a sense oftotal time spent in housework related to cooking three meals andcollecting water and dung for fuel, by using the average time spent byeach of the subsets reporting time for those activities. We find that anadult woman in an electrified household can be expected to spend 6.87hours a day on those activities alone. By comparison, a woman in anon-electrified household would spend on average 7.25 hours (notsignificantly different) on the same activities. The time spent on mealsis preparation only, not eating, nor taking meals out to the fields.

31 Vanek in Amsden, 1980.32Saunders, Davis, Moses, and Ross, 1978.

Non-electrified(Totaln =200)Rs4748.005

s = 5441.66, n = 196

5.89s =2.567, n =199

Households

EIectrified(Totaln = 209)Rs 7636.896

s = 8788.09, n = 207

6.7s =3.47, n =207

Average annual income"

Activity

Average family size"

164' Money, Energy and Welfare

TABLE 5.3 Average Time (mins.) Spent Daily by Adult Females Workingon the Farm and Tending Animals

Activity

Working on farm

Tending animals

Electrified

331.36(n =22)

84.09(n = 33)

Non-electrified

307.20(n = 25)

91.20(n = 25)

•Women and Work • 165

another 17% belong to the 'artisan' category (Table 5.4). No dif­ference is evident in the time spent working on farms either. Mostwomen reporting this activity are from farmer or agricultural labourerfamilies. This time, no one from Punjab reported this activity at all, inkeeping with evidence from other studies, while almost all of theresponses are from Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh.

TABLE 5.4 Occupation frequencies

Work on farm Tend animals

Distribution ofresponses by occupation ofhead ofhousehold

State-wise distribution ofresponses

Andhra Pradesh

Maharashtra

West Bengal

Punjab

Workon farm

17

29

1

o

Tend animals

9

4

11

34

Occupation categoryLarge farmer

Medium farmer

Small farmer

Shopkeeper

Artisan

Professional

Agricultural labour

Electrified

44

44

34

33

28

o26

Non-electrified

2537

35

21

36

4

41Large farmer 10 7Medium farmer 9 16Small farmer 7 15Shopkeeper 2 5 State--Artisan 3 10 Andhra Pradesh.Professional 0 0 MaharashtraAgricultural labour 16 4 West Bengal

Punjab

209

StatestFrequencies

Electrified

52

55

29

73

199

Non-electrified

57

59

48

36Next, we examine available activities outside the home. Thequeries about work for wages outside the village or 'other economicactivities' elicited negligible responses. However, two activities arereported which are still unpaid, but take place outside the home. Theyare 'working on the farm' and 'tending animals'. Table 5.3 reports thetime-use of women in these activities. Once again, there is no dif­ference between women of electrified and non-electrified householdsin the time they spend tending animals. Most women reporting thisactivity, though, are from Punjab. A few are from West Bengal, butthe responses from Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are negligible.Also, as the occupation distribution of the head of household shows,more than 50% are from medium or small farming families, while

The similarity in tasks and time spent between women of electrifiedand non-electrified households would not surprise the feminist school.From the pure feminist point of view, work allocations are determinedneither by the technological environment nor by class, but by genderdivisions of labour alone. In other words, patriarchy dominates, nomatter in which class or under which technological condition a womanfinds herself. Drawing on theMarxian approach, however, there mightbe a preponderance of unpaid housework among middle-class women,while lower-class women work more outside the home, albeit fornegligible wages and in poor working conditions, often accompaniedperhaps with high male unemployment.

::£oj'"

oV)

or-§;

sainujur U!awp

;::-o'"-

::£0

'"JV)-.::::o

tl

c:l

.s

-l

u:::;

+

~ '"

Vl

E: .::;

::£<.l

8~

V)i:lI ee

~ ~

V) U

?-. .§

<.l

ooQ ....

E

~~

0o

<:s <:s

.s Vi

'':: E:

.s

~~

""

t3.::

eee

§-5

lQ

Q~

::£D

~

V)

E:

..!.

!::

~In

c:iCi:

TABLE 5.5 Time Differentials in Selected Tasks by Income Class

Time spent in mealpreparation(minutes)(n =number in subset reporting)

Annual Household Income(Rs)

3DO-1K 1-5K 5-15K 15-30K 30-60K(n =27) (n =222) (n =120) (n =28) (n =6)

Lunch 99 104.34 126.45 137.38 96(n) (15) (151) (86) (21) (5)

Breakfast 39.23 57.55 64.19 56.5 48.33(n) (13) (106) (62) (20) (6)

Family size 5.3 5.62 7.08 9.32 4.83

166· Money, Energy and Welfare

Indeed, the evidence supports the hypothesis that there are differen­ces in time spent on household work based on class. Table 5.5 andFig. 5.1 compare selected activities of women across income groups.The preparation of morning meals and lunch are chosen because theyelicited the most responses, so that the number of responses in eachcell would not be reduced to totally meaningless proportions. As it is,only 6 households report annual incomes between Rs 30,000 and Rs60,000. There appears to be a trend in the time spent in cooking to risewith rising incomes and then fall in the highest income groups. Thelowest and highest income groups come closer in terms of time spent,of course for very different reasons. For the poorest, there may not bemuch to prepare, and there would be the need to seek work outside thehome for the very survival of the family. The highest income groupwomen, on the other hand, may not only have better amenities than thenext group, but the women doing the cooking in these householdsundoubtedly have more help in preparation, or may have supervisoryroles only.

It is interesting to note that the average family size follows the sametrend, rising in the middle groups and then shrinking, although the lastgroup has too few members to be reliable (see Table 5.5 and Fig. 5.2).This could again be the explanatory factor for the time differentials,rather than the income differences. However, it is equally possible thathigher incomes and a larger number of dependents in the electrifiedhouseholds would contribute towards a reduction of the time spent inthese household tasks by the adult women of the house, even if total

I

Women and Work • 169

8

2824

Percentage32

1

115

99

6

Frequency

Primary reason for preferring a fuel for cookingReason

No response

Portability

Cheaper

Easier availability

Easier to operate

Fuel Frequency PercentageNo response 29 7Electricity 15 4Kerosene 10 2Firewood 241 59Agricultural waste 33 8Animal dung 49 12Coal 21 5Charcoal 0 0Other 11 3

TABLE 5.6 'Preferred' fuel for cooking

time spent by the family on those activities went up. The two factors,income and dependents, could serve as adding to women's work orproviding help. The family size in the sample is meant to includeresident dependents. Smaller family sizes in poorer households prob­ably reflect higher mortality rates, higher migration rates and fewerextended family dependents. One would expect the women in thesefamilies to be relatively more active outside the house for financialreasons, and the women in the highest income groups to indulge inmore activities generally termed leisure." Either way, they wouldspend less time on housework. The causal relationships contributingto the differentials in time-use, therefore, are ambiguous.

""l."

~

~<"'l

:lZ!S hnWllj

." ."

r' '"

."oci

I I I -1,----I I I I I t!J I I ~."v..,f

."0\

~0<"'l

I.",....-. Ii;l

oS\.)

'"§

~ I~'"<l)

1:l.:; eeu.s <l)

E'" 0.~oC") .s..Q

"E1ti:

~ ~~C'!'?V) ,....

c:iG:

33 This would be more true for rural areas than urban. Generally in India, the labour-forceparticipation of women is bimodal by income. The poorest participate the most, in theform of wage-labour. Urban upper-class professionals form the other high participationgroup.

So far, no differences between women's work in electrified andnon-electrified house-holds could be clearly attributed to householdelectrification. To pin down the direct effects of electrification, weconsider two more factors, 'preferences' in fuel use, and applianceownership. A look at the stated 'preferences' of the women withregard to the fuel used for cooking (Table 5.6) reveals that an over­whelming 59% 'prefer' firewood. Animal dung comes a distant sec­ond, at 12%. Even though about half the households are electrified,only 4% cite electricity as the first preferred fuel for cooking. I willargue that these responses have little to do with the true preferences ofthe women. Most of them have no idea what cooking with electricityis like. As the frequencies of electrical appliance ownership in Table5.7 show, only 9 households, or 2.2% of the sample, report owning anelectric cooking heater. By contrast, 89% of the households say they'prefer' electricity for lighting. Clearly, plenty of people withoutelectricity still prefer it for lighting. The most likely reason is that there

Fuel preferred for lighting

Women and Work • 171

5671

52

2

7

2

1

9

2

Frequency of owninghouseholds

TABLE 5.7 Appliance Ownership(Valid responses =408. There are no 'no responses')

ApplianceIron

Table fan

Ceiling fan

Television

Record playerRefrigerator

OrnamentallighlsCooking heaterRoom heater

is a clear demonstration effect of electric lights even to those who haveno electricity, while such an effect is impossible for electrical cookingappliances if one does not experience their use. The primary reasonsgiven for 'preferring' a fuel for cooking are that it is cheap (28%),more easily available (24%), and that there is no need to spend moneyincome on it (16%). Only half a dozen respondents give the reason thatit requires less labour.

If only very few women have access to electrical cooking applian­ces, what sort of appliances do the electrified households possess? Itis interesting that even though about 27% (of all households) owns akerosene stove, only 2% 'prefers' it for cooking, and 5% preferskerosene for lighting. Only one household has a gas connection. Thereare three electrical appliances owned by a good segment of oursample: table fan, ceiling fan, and, interestingly, electric iron. The lastalmost certainly sets new standards for clothing and is a new-chore forthe household woman, consistent with the findings in the US citedbefore. It is also interesting that table fans, which are much moreexpensive than hotplates (Chapter II), are bought by many morehouseholds. Perhaps this reflects availability. However, anecdotalevidence suggests that fans are typically not bought for the kitchen andmake no difference to the women who work in them.Many rural energy experts are sceptical about the use of electricityin rural households, especially for cooking, currently the major end-

16

11

6

89

5

o

Percentage

2

6

5

1

65

44

3

6

2

7

o15

24363

22

o

FrequencyFuel

No response

Electricity

Kerosene

Others

Easier to maintainLess labour requiredMore work possibleIrregular supply of electricityNo money required to be spentGreater heat

Habit

Tastier foodLess harm to healthCleaner

Delayed payment possibleOther

170 • Money, Energy and Welfare

+ May be slightly over-stated because of confusion with battery-operatedradios.

Source: Saunders et aI., 1978.

Women and Work .173

TABLE 5.8B Household Appliance Ownership forSurveyed Electricity Users, Colombia

172· Money, Energy and Welfare

use of rural energy, because they consider electricity too expensive anenergy source for cooking. It is important to remember, however, thatthe portfolio of appliance ownership in rural households can undergorapid changes even over a few years. The frequencies reported inTable 5.7 are based on a cross-sectional survey taken in 1980. To geta sense of the rate at which appliance ownership can change, wecompare data from other countries. Tables 5.8A and B show applianceownership by rural households in Costa Rica and Colombia. In thecase of Costa Rica, the households had had electricity for four yearsmaximum, 67% of them having electricity for two years or less. In thecase of Colombia, more than 72% of the households had electricity fortwo years or less. Electric irons appear to enjoy an unwavering popu­larity across economies and cultures! However, these householdsalready demonstrate a much higher proportional ownership of electricstoves (18.7% and 8.7% in Costa Rica and Colombia, respectively),other cooking appliances (blenders and beaters, 7.6% and 11.6%,respectively), and refrigerators.

ApplianceIronElectricradio"

TelevisionRefrigeratorBlender, beaterElectricstoveRecord playerSewingmachine, Washer

Percent owning86.941.012.612.111.68.73.81.9

• May be over-stated because of confusion with battery-operated radios.

TABLE 5.8A Apppliance Ownership for Surveyed Members oftheSan Carlos Rural Electric Cooperative, Costa Rica

Appliance

Iron

Electric radio'

Refrigerator

Television set

Electric stove

Washing machine

Blender, beater

Sewingmachine

Record player

Waterpump

Hotplate

Percent owning

96.5

30.4

27.5

24.6

18.7

16.4

7.6

6.4

3.5

3.5

2.9

Even more instructive is the change over time in appliance owner­ship in rural Ireland from the 1950s to the late 1970s (Tables 5.9A andB). Electricity, which was the main cooking energy for 2% of house­holds in 1958 rose to 25% by 1979. Other related appliances, such astoasters and mixers, also rose significantly in terms of ownership, asdid refrigerators. The share of solid fuels in cooking fell throughoutthe period, and the share of oil fell too. The consumption of electricityin electrified households rose considerably during the period.

TABLE 5.9A Domestic Appliance Ownership amongRural Electricity Consumers in Ireland

(percentage ownership rounded off to nearest 1%)

Percentage of ConsumersAppliance

1958 1964 1966 1968 1973 1979MainCooking

Electric 2 13 15 17 15 25Bottled gas 4 14 18 24 33 34Solidfuel 84 70 65 57 48 35Oil 10 3 2 2 4 6

Electric waterheater 4 5 8 8 8 24

Source of Tables 5.9A and B: Shiel, 1984.

174. Money, Energy and Welfare

Source: ESB Time-Series Surveys, May 1981NA: Not available

Women and Work • 175CONCLUDING REMARKS

The expectation that household electrification as a general processwould likely affect the work and work schedules of women turns outto be without evidence, at least at the early stages of electrification.Rural electrification in India, focused as it is at the village level,without any specific policies geared to electricity use, does not haveanyimpact on the daily routines of women whose work is fuel gather­ing and cooking, or farm work and cattle grazing. The only differencewe found so far was in the fewer family hours spent per month byelectrified households on gathering firewood. We could assume that itis women who 'save' this time, though, as research on Westernsocieties show, the time added by additional housework may offsetany time 'saved', so that while task apportionment may change, totalhousework does not. The reapportioning of time within a woman'sschedule typically did not mean a restructuring of the sexual divisionof labour in terms of types of work, and nor did it imply a movementtowards paid work outside the home.Even if we assume that the 'family hours' were mostly women'shours, can we hold electrification accountable for this difference? Wefound that this was hard to establish. While studying the typology ofthe rural energy sector in Chapter II, we saw that among householdsthat collected firewood, non-electrified households used more fire­wood by weight of headloads per month. This may suggest a substitu­tion between electricity and firewood, but in fact, that is not the case.Too few households reported owning electric cooking or heatingappliances for that to be true. Moreover, 59% of them 'preferred'firewood as a cooking fuel and 12% 'preferred' dung, as opposed to4% for electricity-a response that reflects feasible choices rather thantrue preferences. The appliances reported with high frequencies arenot used for tasks in which wood could be substituted-they are newuses.Electrified households do use significantly more dung by weightper month (Chapter II). There might be some substitution going onbetween dung and wood, but that does not seem to make any dif­ference in the time spent collecting dung between women of elec­trified households and non-electrified ones. It is possible that elec­trified households, which are richer on average, own more of their owncattle, and also that their women have more help collecting dung. Forthe same reason, electrified households may also be the ones that have

Percentage of Consumers1964 1966 1968 1973 1979

4 7 12 20 3S2 5 NA 18 38

7 NA 17 4879 82 85 86 8747 50 53 55 698 14 19 44 76

4 1823 43 55 NA 844 5 NA 11 25

10 12 16 21 4519 26 30 41 59

Percentage of consumersElectricity consumption 1964 1966 1968 1973 1979Up to 200 Units (kWh) 21 17 14 11 82Q0-4ookWh 23 17 14 10 440Q-8ookWh 23 22 22 20 8800-1200 kWh 9 11 12 15 111200-2000 kWh 10 12 14 15 182000-4000 kWh 9 12 15 15 23Over 4000 Units 5 8 10 12 27

Source: ESB Time-Series Surveys, May 1981.

TABLE 5.9B Annual Electricity Consumption per Household amongRural Electricity Consumers(Rounded off to nearest 1%)

Electric blanket 1FoodmixerHairdryer 1Electric iron 68Electric kettle 39Refrigerator 4FreezerTelevisionToaster 3Vacuum cleaner 9Washing machine 11

Appliance 1958

176· Money, Energy and Welfare

more efficient stoves, which might explain their lower use of firewoodper month. In other words, electrification cannot be established as thereason for the difference in family hours of firewood collection.

Time spent by women on cooking meals follows an inverted U­shaped pattern across income groups, rising in the middle incomegroups and falling again in the highest income groups. Family sizefollows the same pattern. So time differences in cooking activities doexist between classes, though not between electrified and non-elec­trified households. Are the work hours spent on cooking or collectingfuel the same in electrified and non-electrified households due to some'traditional' stickiness? The straight answers to the reasons why a fuelis preferred suggests a clear rejection of the notion of tradition-boundrigidities. The reasons given for a choice are overwhelmingly those ofthe money constraint, relative prices, and supply constraints. 'Habit'did not evoke a significant following, nor did reasons such as 'tastierfood'.

In the entire sample, electricity was overwhelmingly chosen as thepreferred fuel for lighting, but a miniscule proportion of even elec­trified households cited it as the preferred fuel for cooking or heating.This is not surprising given the appliances owned by electrified house­holds, most of which bear no relation to women's work. The only onethat might, the electric iron, would be adding a new, higher standardof household work for women.

Why has household electrification brought about no measurablechange in the lives of women? The Beckerian neo-classical approachto household economics might explain this as a rational choice. Butthis approach has come in for much criticism in recent years, not onlyfrom feminist or Marxist perspectives, but others within the broaderstandard tradition. The game theoretic approach, involving coopera­tive conflicts within families, has gained ground." Households in ruralIndia do demonstrate an acute consciousness of material constraintsand relative prices in the arena of rural energy. The relative wages ofmen and women in different occupations are also heavily biasedagainst women, even in identical tasks." However, the assumption

34 See for instance the discussion of intra-family distribution issues in Amartya Sen,1985b.35 Accurate estimates of wage rates are hard to come by, but for example, ILO, Womenin the Indian Labour Force, 1981a, reported women's wage rates that work out to be onaverage about 65% of men's for farmwork and 56% for non-farm work. The wages werebased on the National Sample Survey of 1970-1. The differential was 5 percentage points

IIjIIi~

1j

s

Women and Work • 177

that the observed outcome in divisions of labour and work hours arethe considered rational best 'investment' decisions, leads inexorablybackwards to the further assumptions that would make it work, suchas family utility functions, collaborative discourses among familymembers, and calculative comparisons of relative advantage in themarket economy, some of which can be quite far-fetched or at variancewith available information. The approach tends to close the door toalternative explanations, leaving little to analysis than an overwhelm­ing bias in favour of the status quo and its justification.

Feminist research contends that there is little in the empirical workon women's labour in America (or India) to support the Beckerianapproach. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence of conflict,sexual discrimination, and exploitation; both at home and in wagelabour. The work of several scholars of the American housewife,starting with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, have foundevidence of disabling monotony and isolation among the very peoplewho supposedly chose housework on the basis of comparative ad­vantage, higher productivity at home, and higher utilities associatedwith the complementarity of child bearing and child rearing. Indeed,some have found their condition to be a classic case of alienation.Moreover, the trade-off between housework and outside work is notclear even in middle-class America. Vanek, Hartmann, and othersshow that American husbands provide negligible help with houseworkregardless of the employment status of their wives, with the result thatwomen who work outside are saddled with a double job and their workhours are extended significantly especially in the years when there aresmall children in the house.

Much of this research can be generalized to the Indian middle class,especially in urban centres. But large numbers of rural women do workoutside the house, mostly on family farms or as casual wage-labour.The lowest income classes have the highest female wage-labour par­ticipation rates. There has been a declining trend in India in thenumber of women workers in 'gainful employment' in the rural sector.The proportion of women cultivators has also been declining, with acorresponding increase in the proportion of women casual labourers,supporting the argument that the pauperization and marginalization ofthe landless and land-poor in rural areas have hit women workers the

bigger for women from non-cultivating wage-earning households as compared to thosefrom small cultivator households.

178 - Money, Energy and Welfare

hardest." Much or the unpaid work done by women is also not quite'housework', since it is work outside the home, such as farm labour,and cannot be considered complementary to household responsibili­ties such as child care.

As there is evidence of differences in time spent across incomegroups, class-based analysis is clearly essential in understanding theworking lives of rural Indian women. There is a large literature on thephenomenon of increasing segregation of women in South Asia, in avariety of forms all of which involve a withdrawal from the marketlabour force, as family income increases. Women working for wagesis a sign of fmancial distress, while women as housewives is a sign ofmiddle-class status. The process turns around only in urban upperclasses, creating the bimodal labour participation rates for womenbased on class. However, the Marxian orthodoxy falls far short inexplaining gender differences in work. Not only is the revolutionaryreorganization of class relations taken to be a necessary and sufficientcondition for the 'liberation' of women, but Engels' positions onwomen and work clearly imply that his idea of emancipation lay in thesubstitution of communal dining for the private kitchen, and not in aradical restructuring of the sexual division of labour. Even feministrevisions of Marxism that have challenged various aspects of theorthodoxy have remained true to its core."

In understanding women and work in rural India, neither puregender contradictions nor pure class differences will do. In the socio­economic milieu of rural India, gender chauvinism and class an­tagonisms are closely woven together. As Maria Mies argues, theseparation ofpatriarchy and capitalism as systems creates unnecessaryduplication and confusion in the analysis. 'Capitalist-patriarchy', asshe calls it, may well emerge in similar forms in all parts of the world,and at the 'centre' or the 'periphery', in world systems terminology."There may be structural and institutional commonalities between thesubordination of the Western housewife and Third World women, asMies argues. However, I would argue for a much stronger regionalcontext for the analysis of patriarchy and class on public policies,technological change, and women's work in South Asia.

To return to the potential gains for women in rural households from

36See forexampleDixon,1978;Mies,Bennholdt-Thomsen,andvonWerlhof,1988;ILD,1981b.37 Dalla Costa, 1972.38 Mies, 1986.

Women and Work -179

electrification, recall the distinction between two kinds of possiblegains, reduction of 'drudgery' while doing the same kinds of work,mainly unpaid housework, and expansion of opportunities to changethe sexual division of labour and to include market opportunities forpay. There is no clear evidence from our data of either gain so far,under the existing policy, which limits itself to 'village electrification'and does not focus adequately even at the level of the household, letalone the individuals within it. However, evidence from other coun­tries suggests that at least the 'drudgery' factor could be affected ifweCould channel appliance purchase and electricity use towards wo­men's current activities.

Respondents have clearly stated that money, relative prices andavailability are the most important factors determining fuel choice. Ifelectricity and electrical appliances become more easily available,more attractive in prices, and are offered with reasonable financing,electricity will compete better. Existing policies in rural electrificationcan be amended to betier suit the needs of women and their work. Theprovision and financing of household electrification can be tied to theprovision and easy financing of appliances that have a positive impacton women's daily routines. The mandatory participation of householdwomen in the process of electrification and financing would make iteasier for their voices to be heard. In a situation where money ex­change is becoming a necessary condition, the relative bargainingposition of marginalized, unpaid, or under-paid women is precarious,to say the least, so none of these measures could succeed without beinglinked to the interests of the (cash-earning) household men as well.However, adult women could be made co-owners of appliances ofwhich they are the principal users.

As for the second potential gain, the restructuring of work patterns,the lessons from research in highly electrified countries show thatchanging technologies by themselves make no difference to women'swork opportunities in terms of housework versus outside employment.In America in the 1920s, women in non-electrified households in ruralareas spent only 2% more time on household chores than did those inelectrified households, even though the latter were fitted with various'labour-saving devices'." New technologies led to reapportioning oftime, but not sharing of housework or total time spent on it. New'output' levels are sought and new standards set. While such devices

39 Cowan, in Hartmann and Banner, 1974.

180· Money, Energy and Welfare

in the Indian context may make a substantial difference in the workingconditions of the housewife, it might further cement housework withwomen, contributing to the permanent stereotyping of women and'women's work'. Gains in the 'drudgery' factor, therefore, mightdamage the chances of restructuring of work patterns."

The only thing that has made a difference in the burden of house­work, as shown by Vanek's research on American women, is outsideemployment. Even that led to a reduction in hours spent by women onhousework during the week, but not to a sharing of housework be­tween men and women. While conventional wisdom expects barriersto the outside employment of women, some within the new feministsocialist school argue just the opposite. They say the problem even indeveloped societies, is not that women do not have enough work,whether paid or unpaid. Most argue that women are seriously over­worked. The problem, they say, is that through forces of compulsion,not choice, women in developing economies are becoming an increas­ingly vulnerable and expendable form of labour;"

In fact, available information on the working conditions of ruralIndian women makes one wonder if opportunities of outside employ­ment should even be considered a gain for women. Even the fewqualitative accounts of the positive aspects of employment and cashincome in terms of experience, bargaining power within the house­hold, or consciousness, are countered by appalling working conditionsin most cases. For those who consider working at home to be a formof bondage, it will come as a rude awakening that working for pay inIndia is not necessarily a sign of liberation. The subordination ofwomen as housewives is a signal of middle-class status, while workingwomen are a sign of distress on the part of the poor.?

Even though such class/gender contradictions make it harder for usto specify a welfare gain for women through technological changes inthe household, there is little hope of restructuring women's work and

40 This dilemma is relevant in the Western context too, for example over the issue ofpaying for housework. See the discussion by Myra Marx Ferree in Diamond, 1983.41 V. Bennholdt-Thomsen in Mies, Bennholdt-Thornsen, and von Werlhof, 1988.42 In addition, there is a disturbing trend of the abuse of women as an instrument of classdomination, not just as the remnants of feudal relations, but by the new capitalists in thecountryside as well. Apparently the idea that male labourers can be kept in line throughdebt and the sexual exploitation of 'their' women, persists in the new economic relations.See Maria Mies on labour-related violence in Bihar in Mies, Bennholdt-Thomsen. andvon Werlhof, 1988.

.Women and Work • 181

opportunities without their participation in 'public industry'. Par­ticipation in the cash economy, whether capitalist or socialist, remainsthe only viable option to break the rigidities of sexual divisions oflabour. No matter how bad the working conditions or the burden of the'double day', it appears that that alone can impact on the ignorance,inexperience, isolation and the ignominious fear of abandonmentwhich appear to characterize rural women's lives in India. To that end,any measure that might increase women's labour supply to the marketeconomy is probably worth identifying as beneficial. However, elec­trification policies cannot help directly to achieve this end. The evi­dence shows that household electrification can at best only indirectlyaffect this objective, through the pressure it exerts on households tointegrate into the larger monetized economy. The only clear directgain of household electrification is a better quality of life for womenin their existing pattern of work. However, this clearly does nothappen automatically with the spread of electrification, especially inthe early period of expansion. It can be assisted by additional policiesthat encourage the purchase and use of appliances that ameliorate theworking conditions of women. Ironically, this gain could itself beoffset by casting the sexual divisions of labour in stone through thevery technological changes that were meant to transform them.