Self-Care and Community Care by Indian Women: Materiality and Time Use

Self-care is an aspect of social reproduction— the basis of a sustainable economy. Every day, we produce ourselves —by brushing our teeth, bathing, and asking ourselves how we feel. As women (and other care workers) produce themselves, they are revitalized to offer care to those around them, whether at home or in the market economy. However, the market economy understands self-care in individualistic ways, imagining it as a way to brand wellness products. Poet and activist Audre Lorde (1980) critiques the market economy's understanding of self-care. Lorde presents a self-affirming idea of self-care—to take the time to understand how one's body feels versus how it looks. In this paper, we inquire —do married, working Indian women undergo self-care? We analyze data from the Time Use Survey of 2019 and inquire how much time do married working Indian women spend on i) personal care and the maintenance of their bodies, ii) leisure and iii) community care and iv) private prayer, which we define as self-care. Our study shows that married working Indian women spend 97 minutes a day on average less than married working men on self-care. Here, self-care includes sleeping, eating and personal hygiene, where the gender gap of married working population is at 45 minutes a day. We estimate the effects of demographic variables and paid and unpaid work on time spent in self-care by men and women through a simultaneous equation model. Through this, we trace the relationship between classical Indian patriarchy and the materiality of self-care.