Why do half of metropolitan women in India stay at home?
Manisha, a 19-year-old maid, works full-time at a home outside Delhi, the capital of India.
She stopped going to school back home in Jharkhand because there was inconsistent public transportation and frequent sexual harassment on the roadways. She took a trip to the Indian capital and secured a position as an apartment resident. She still avoids going outside, though, citing unsafe conditions and transportation challenges.
“I only go out once or twice a month even though I work. In the streets, I don’t feel at ease, “she claims.
How India determines the worth of women’s domestic labor
Rahul Goel, an assistant professor of transportation studies at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, wouldn’t be surprised by Manisha’s tale (IIT). To learn more about how gender inequality affects daily mobility, he has analyzed data from India’s first Time Use Survey, which evaluates the amount of time people spend engaging in various activities. (In 2019 there are surveyors dispersed around India gathering data on how people spent their time the day before the interview.) Mr. Goel specifically examined a dataset of 170,000 survey participants who were city and town dwellers.
The results were startling. When surveyors went door-to-door, 53% of women admitted that they had not left the house the day before. Just 14% of the guys claimed to have stayed in as well.
