Gender, Work, Economy and Livelihoods
This domain tests how gendered power shapes paid and unpaid work, labour markets, livelihoods and macroeconomic policy. Expect questions on female labour-force participation, the care economy, informality and measurement.
Core concepts
- Gendered division of labour: productive work is often coded male, reproductive and care work female.
- Double burden/time poverty: women combine paid work with unpaid domestic labour.
- Occupational segregation: horizontal (across sectors) and vertical (across hierarchies).
- Gender pay gap: explained by segregation, care penalties, negotiation and discrimination, not merely qualification differences.
- Informality and feminisation: women over-represented in precarious, home-based and informal work.
- U-shaped female labour-force participation: participation can fall with rising household income before rising again, reflecting income effects and care constraints.
- Measurement: PLFS, time-use surveys, ILO conventions 100, 111, 156, 183 and 190; MGNREGA, self-help groups, Kudumbashree, microfinance.
Worked example
A country's female labour-force participation falls as per-capita income rises. Explain using the U-shape. Reasoning: at low incomes women work out of necessity, often in agriculture; as incomes rise, the income effect and unpaid care responsibilities pull women out of the labour force; later, education and service-sector jobs can draw them back in. The pattern is not proof that women 'prefer' not to work.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating unpaid care as outside 'work'.
- Using labour-force participation as a complete measure of women's economic contribution.
- Ignoring caste, class and rural-urban differences in work patterns.