The Silent Double Burden: Working Women and the Politics of Unpaid Labour in India

Although women's participation in paid employment has increased in India, gendered divisions of unpaid domestic and care work remain largely unchanged.As a result, working women are compelled to shoulder a dual responsibility of paid productive labour and unpaid reproductive labour, commonly described as the "double burden."This article situates women's unpaid labour within the framework of feminist political economy and offers a critical analysis of how patriarchy and neoliberal economic structures jointly render such labour invisible, undervalued, and excluded from policy considerations.It argues that unpaid labour is not merely a private or cultural issue but a deeply political and structural problem that intensifies women's time poverty, health vulnerabilities, and constrained socio-political participation.The article concludes by emphasizing the need for recognition, redistribution, and structural reorganization of unpaid labour as essential pathways toward substantive gender equality in India.