By — Anisha Jyotirmayee

Abstract:

This article reconsiders the issue of time poverty as the problem associated with the lack of discretionary time from the perspective of structural constraints, caused by the unequal distribution of labor. This article considers the issue of the unequal share of housework performed by females as one of the reasons for the development of various social and economic inequalities and marginalization in society. Moreover, using the framework of public health, the article explains the association between time scarcity and poor health conditions caused by late visits to doctors, increased levels of stress, and the high prevalence of morbidity. In addition, the article focuses on the notion of “the invisible layer” of the mental load, which can be viewed as an additional aspect of time poverty.

Introduction

Consider two working individuals operating within the same 24 hours in a day. The first individual finishes work and has time in the evenings for rest, hobbies, or social life, whereas the other finishes work to start a second shift of cooking, cleaning, caregiving, and emotional support. Time poverty is one of those concepts that sounds abstract until mapped onto a real day. The second person is not just “busy”, but they are time poor, where their time has already been claimed before they can choose how to use it. Time poverty refers to experiencing a lack of sufficient time to fulfill responsibilities, pursue interests, or engage in activities that contribute to one’s well-being due to various demands on one’s time. Time poverty has often been described as a lack of choice, rather than a lack of hours, signalling a deeper structural issue.

Globally, women and girls perform a disproportionate share of unpaid care work; they are socialised to perform caregiving tasks from an early age. Girls between the ages of 10 and 14 spend 50% more time helping around the house than boys of the same age. By adulthood, women in developed and developing nations spend an average of 2 and 3.4 times as many hours per day as men on unpaid work, respectively, shouldering the heaviest burden of cooking, cleaning, and caring for children and the elderly. Women spend significantly more hours on domestic and caregiving tasks, while men’s contribution is often framed as “help” and not a responsibility. This creates a compounding effect where there is less time for education or skill building, interrupted careers or part-time work, and reduced income and financial independence. In this manner, time poverty translates directly into economic inequality. 

Time Scarcity as a Health Crisis

Domestic responsibilities of women leave very little time to seek medical care, promoting a kind of self-neglect. It acts as a key social determinant of health, frequently leading to high stress, anxiety, burnout, poor nutrition, and chronic illnesses like heart disease due to reduced time for exercise and sleep. According to the Kaiser Women’s Health Survey, in the United States, almost one-quarter of American women reported delaying or not seeking health care due to insufficient time. With income inequality, time poverty prevents women from earning money, which limits their ability to pay for health care. 

Time poverty also includes an invisible layer of mental load, where the issue is much harder to see when it is not just about doing the tasks, but also about taking responsibility for them at all times. This is usually the ongoing and background work of organizing life, which includes anticipating the needs of the households, planning and sequencing tasks for the family, coordinating and catering to the needs of all individuals in the household. There is no clear start or finish to the work involved in this layer, as even when someone appears to be “resting”, the mental load of impending work keeps running. In this scenario, time poverty is not just about not having time, but about never being able to fully own your time. The invisible layer tends to fall disproportionately on women because women are often seen as the “default manager” of the household, and even in cases when tasks are shared, planning and responsibility are not.

Self-care is a Privilege

Unmarketed advice to feel better has been “take time for yourself”, assuming something that not everyone has, which is control over their own time. Influencers across social media promoting self-care using expensive products is a privilege that most women do not have. At the base level, self-care involves having uninterrupted time, the mental space,e and the ability to step away from their allocated responsibilities without any consequences. The concept of self-care is not just difficult but structurally out of reach for someone whose time has already been allocated to them, with work, caregiving, and survival tasks. There is an irony to this where those who provide the most care work are the ones least able to care for themselves. Women managing households, children, and elders have no time to spare, as even if they stop for a minute, the backlog of work waiting afterward piles up. 

In situations where time is carved out, it does not function as rest. The “me-time” has been squeezed between responsibilities, not free from them. The relaxation itself becomes scheduled and optimized, where self-care becomes a to-do list to achieve rather than something to experience to feel better or look after yourself. Mainstream conversations around self-care often individualize the issue, but time poverty shows how it depends on various factors, and the problem is not just poor time management; it is more often an unequal distribution of labor and time. 

Invisibility of Labor

The persistence of this issue does not just rely upon how prevalent it is, but also on how effectively it stays out of sight. The invisibility is built into the way work, value, and responsibilities can be defined. Most unpaid care work blends into everyday life, where cooking is seen as routine, caring is seen as love,e and managing a household is treated as “just a part of life”. These tasks are repetitive and continuous, and hence they are never counted as a distinct unit of work. This reduction of value is actively connected to the way we talk about it, also, where men “help” at home, implying the responsibility belongs to someone else, and women are described as “not working” if they are not in paid employment. The main factor influencing the language is backed by the fact that traditional economic measures such as the Gross Domestic Product, count only the paid, market-based activities, and the entire system that sustains the workforce remains statistically invisible. This creates an entirely distorted picture of productivity where the economies appear to function independently of the labor that actually sustains them. This also persists further because it serves as an economic and social structure where households function without additional costs, so states can avoid investing heavily in any kind of care infrastructure. 

Conclusion

Time poverty is a less-heard-of issue that gets subdued because of the invisibility of the labor. Policy solutions to time poverty only work if there are ways to redistribute time, reduce unpaid work, or recognize it as real labor. One of the biggest structural gaps is that unpaid care work is not counted as an economic contribution, which can possibly be approached by using time-use surveys integrated into the national data or assigning any monetary value to unpaid work. This also needs to be done simultaneously with the redistribution of work; women will be pushed further into unpaid roles. The extent and the normalcy of the phenomenon make it harder to do away with change. This phenomenon teaches us how time is not just a personal resource but a socially organized and politically shaped issue that has become the “normal”. 

Author’s Bio:

Anisha Jyotirmayee is a student of Journalism and Media Studies at O.P Jindal Global University. Starting with an inclined interest towards literature, she started writing research-based articles that defined and worked with real social issues. She has also embarked upon interviews and panel discussions with experts and marginalized groups.

Image Source: https://makemothersmatter.org/time-poverty-and-the-motherhood-penalty-unveiling-economic-and-social-injustices/