Conference Agenda

Introduction: Care work in homes, predominantly unpaid, has caused some groups of South Asian women to withdraw from paid work. We review the pandemic and post-pandemic ‘satellite boundary’ of labour-force participation, offering innovations. We focus attention on three levers of improved research for transformative policy on labour supply. The first lever is widening the age-groups involved; the second is to enumerate key career types; and the third is to match statistical model types to dataset types, giving specifics for six South Asian countries.

Research question: When one notices who cares for children and the elderly (and these age-groups’ unpaid work), what changes occur in forecasts of labour supply?

Methodology: We first theorise about the satellite boundary, reviewing the literature and expanding conceptually the sphere where the general production boundary exceeds the boundary of the Gross National Income. We review evidence about the impact that care-work time-fluidity has had upon recent labour-force participation in six South Asian countries 2015-2022. The third section gives new empirical findings 2019-2021 for India, exploring how the work of children and over-65s can be included so one adequately covers the drivers of labour supply to the market. We consider four modelling approaches that address the fluid boundary between household care work and market work -- these enable visualising the ‘satellite boundary’. Fragmented work careers involve departures from fulltime market work, while parttime work enables returning after maternity. For India, we offer estimates for the age-range 6-75 years in 2019 and 2022 including care hours.

Preferred cross-sectional modelling options are a fractional logit, logistic, and path model, and data-combining models; panel methods include difference-in-difference, growth curves, and two-stage least squares where data permit.

Contributions to literature: The innovation brings gendered difference to the fore in statistical modelling of the satellite boundary.

We also list the key microdata sources for future statistical research on six countries India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Afghanistan, noting which of the models are feasible for each country.

Findings: Indian women tended to do less paid work and more unpaid work after the COVID19 pandemic. New research on such declines in labour-force participation can incorporate the satellite boundary issue, career fragmentation, and South Asian institutions of unpaid-care work.

Among other various inequalities, the division of work is seen as a potential powerful equalizer. The formulation of policies supporting equality in work should be considered when there is a motive for holistic development amid the socioeconomic downturn. Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in India suggests that females are at a greater disadvantage than males in sharing crisis distress and securing jobs. A direct effect of the shift in the institutional provisions on the household is an increasing care burden, eventually decreasing the time autonomy for paid work. Sharing the equal risk of the disease but unequal care burden by the females have affected their capabilities in manifolds. Alongside, preventive measures of social distancing during lockdown have curtailed the demand for such labour and services. This may have a two-way repercussion- first, females' approachability to the available decent jobs, and second unable to get absorbed by the labour market due to declining work capabilities. In this aspect, gender-responsive policy interventions are necessary as pandemic relief measures.

Against this backdrop, the study provides a conceptual understanding of unpaid care work, its gendered nature, the extent of time allocation to care burden, and the cost of care burden in terms of declining capabilities amid COVID-19. Empirical evidence intends to show that the percentage of females involved in care work diverges across the Indian states. Further, the empirical evidence gathered from 120 household females reveals the significant observation that the unequal sharing of care burden amid COVID-19 has been detrimental to their capabilities. It has affected the choices for paid work in the labour market. The study discusses the challenges ahead for caregivers amid the COVID-19 care burden. Lastly, the study focuses on the policy interventions urgently required to reduce the vulnerability of caregivers in the labour market. This study fills a significant gap in the existing literature by incorporating reflection on subjectivity.

Early years education and care (ECEC) is a foundational public good. Quality ECEC provision addresses inequalities and enables parents of young children to participate in the labour market. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, our research shows the ECEC sector in England and Wales is in crisis, characterised by a combination of lack of affordability for parents, permanent closure of settings and an exodus of staff.

This presentation addresses two research questions relevant to conference track iii:

1) How do the mechanisms of marketisation operate to set wages and place constraints on the quality of work in ECEC; and

2) What policies are required to ensure that the work of ECEC workers is “valued” and protected?

We present findings from a large multi-method ESRC/UKRI research study on the experiences of ECEC providers and workers in the ECEC sector during the pandemic. Data was analysed from 5000 survey responses and over 300 interviews with nursery workers and managers, nannies, childminders, parents and grandparents which represent a broad cross-section of socio-economic demographics, geographic regions and provider types (public, private and third-sector). Surveys and interviews were undertaken at two key points of the pandemic in Winter 2020 and Autumn 2021, with surveys designed to examine patterns in financial viability of providers, workforce stability and responses to Covid-19 in different parts of the sector. Interviews identified rationales for management and worker responses to the pandemic.

We contribute to theories of work and employment relations by identifying how the mechanisms of marketization and the monopsony role of the state direct and constrain wages, labour relations and work quality in ECEC. First, we show how, by stimulating demand-led provision in ECEC, marketization has exposed the sector to a high level of volatility. Second, the state, as monopsony buyer, has acted as a price-setter. Third, these factors, combined with demand inelasticity and low price flexibility limit how providers can respond to adverse market conditions, leaving the erosion of working conditions and pay for ECEC workers is the key lever/flexibility for providers to manage loss. Fourth, these dysfunctions of marketization have resulted in a ‘productivity paradox’ in the delivery of ECEC whereby labour shortages do not prompt wage rises and have further entrenched the undervaluing of care work in this feminized workforce.

We examine possible policy and legal responses whereby government funding and purchasing of ECEC services could limit volatility and support fair wages, pay progression and career development.