Girls evolving time use and emerging resistance

Since 2007, Plan International’s Real Choices, Real Lives qualitative, longitudinal study has tracked the development of 142 girls and their families in nine countries, exploring how age, gender and poverty intersect within the context of the social norms that underpin girls’ opportunities and realities.

Here, Jasmine Gideon (Senior Lecturer, Birkbeck University) and Lynsey Robinson (PhD Candidate, UCL-IOE) share insights from our analysis around girls’ unpaid care work, in response to recent research from Young Lives on children’s time use.

Renewed interest in measuring time use has been generated by the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030. Yet feminist researchers have long advocated the importance of measuring time spent on unpaid care work – which is often done by females, and too often invisible and taken for granted.

A full understanding of time use is vital not only for ensuring policy makers have a complete picture of women’s (and men's) total economic contribution, but also critical with a view to limiting the reproduction of gender inequalities across generations. This calls for recognition of children’s contribution to unpaid care work – particularly the role of girls.

Recent research from the Young Lives longitudinal study shows how children's time use in India, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Peru changes as they get older.

With the exception of India, the analysis highlights that differences between the amount of time girls and boys spend on work across all countries at all ages is not significant.

But, across all countries, girls faced a greater work burden in the home, including cleaning, cooking and caring for younger siblings. Boys, meanwhile, were more likely to be engaged in work for family businesses, farms, and in paid work.

Findings from Plan International UK’s Real Choices, Real Lives study

While the Young Lives data highlights the importance of both boys' and girls' work in the household, Real Choices, Real Lives data provides a more nuanced picture of the gender division within households.

We explore how the girls themselves understand their place in the household, as well as how they navigate and subvert gender inequalities.

This is important because the nature of work, and the value that is placed on it, matters when it comes to gender policies and programmes that seek to change unequal gender relations within the home.

Adolescence and unpaid care work

Adolescence is an important time, where gender norms around unpaid care work become reinforced as girls are expected to take on more responsibilities within the house.

This was particularly the case in Benin, Togo and Uganda, with girls taking on tasks including cooking and looking after younger siblings:

A good girl must know how to do housework for her mother and pay attention to the advice from her mother and father. I am a good daughter to both; I can do domestic chores and I listen to their advice and I am respectful.

- Girl in Benin, 2018.

Age, birth order and sibling composition also matter. The girls, and their parents, told us that boys tend to do more household work in families with fewer girls, particularly if they are the eldest.

For example, in Benin and Uganda, some boys help with collecting water and washing dishes. However, this does not always extend into adulthood, and chores are often passed onto younger female siblings.

When girls spoke about the gender division of responsibilities, it often transpired that females were required to 'work in the fields' and do housework whilst men rarely cooked, cleaned or washed clothes.

Resistance to gender norms

One clear dynamic we observe in the Real Choices, Real Lives cases is that girls and women show resistance to gendered social norms.

Whilst many of the girls are becoming aware of the gender inequalities that surround them, many are also articulating their dissatisfaction with these, stating that it’s ‘not fair’.

It’s not fair because you both go to the garden but remember it’s the woman [who has] to come back and make sure food is ready on time… It’s not fair because it would be okay for the men also to do the chores and cooking [and for] the women [to] also look for money.

 - Girl in Uganda, 2018.

We also see some of the caregivers, particularly mothers and grandmothers, talking about the need to change the division of labour (including both as a result of observing others and proactively challenging the status quo).

Identifying these points of ‘rupture’ provides us with an insight into how, in some cases, change around gendered social norms can emerge.

We women work more than men, I would like the men to help us in the home because I’ve seen a family where this happens, and it works very well.

- Girl in Togo’s mother, 2018.

Sometimes I want to share housework with my husband, we have to fight and then he does housework…

- Girl in Vietnam’s mother, 2016.