The Profound Influence of Time Poverty on Women’s Work–Life Conflict

Time poverty is the time deficit caused by having little to no time for recreational activities owing to significant labour of both paid and unpaid works. Such a time deficit is related to adverse health outcomes and accounts for early withdrawal from the workforce. Research to date does not examine differences in time deficits in India. This study takes advantage of India’s first Time-Use Survey collected in 2019 (TUS 2019). It uses total work time (committed time and contracted time) to measure the differences in the time poverty rate for women. In the first step, we identify the overall time poverty rate, which shows that 1 out of every 10 working Indians is extremely time-poor, rearranging between paid and unpaid duties for more than 12 h daily. In the second step, we explore women's work–life conflict and the burden of unpaid labour. While rural women are suffering from a severe labour dilemma, urban women can be observed to make time for themselves. In the third step, the multivariate logistic regression technique is used to understand the impact of critical variables such as educational attainment, marital status, and employment status on time poverty. The data confirm that marriage substantially impacts time poverty since married women have less time than unmarried women.