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← Social and Political Life – II — all chaptersGrowing up as Boys and Girls
Start here: why this chapter matters
In simple wordsThink of a school sports day where the boys are always sent to carry the benches and the girls to make the welcome cards. Nobody wrote a rule; everyone ‘just knows’. Do that every day for fifteen years and the boys grow up thinking lifting is their job and the girls that decorating is theirs — and that one of those jobs deserves more praise. This chapter is about how those ‘everyone knows’ ideas are made, how they differ from place to place, and what they mean for who works how much, and for how little reward.
This is Chapter 4 of NCERT's Class 7 Social and Political Life – II (2024–25 reprint) and the first chapter of Unit Three, ‘Gender’. It fills book pp. 38–47 (a 10-page PDF; PDF page n = book page n − 37). The unit's opener and Teacher's Note on Gender (pp. 36–37) are printed at the end of the previous chapter's PDF (gess303) and are read here. Its parts: an opener on identity; two case studies — Growing up in Samoa in the 1920s and Growing up male in Madhya Pradesh in the 1960s; how societies make distinctions between boys and girls; a storyboard, ‘My Mother Does Not Work’; Valuing housework; Lives of domestic workers, with Melani's account; the time-use table and the double burden; Women's work and equality (anganwadis, crèches); an SDG poster and two women's-group posters; four exercises and a four-term glossary. We use seven concept sections — the chapter is short and story-led, so they are compact. The book's table is completed with asserts. Facts from the Constitution, laws and later surveys are added as Beyond NCERT (†) with sources and years. Debates — where gender roles come from, whether the Samoan research was right, whether housework should be paid — are set out as attributed positions side by side, with no verdict.
- How this chapter relates to UPSC, honestly: GS1 (Indian society — role of women, social empowerment) asks about patriarchy, women's work and the ‘time and space’ women have; GS3 now asks about the care economy; the Essay paper has set gender socialisation itself. This chapter gives the plain ideas — socialisation, unpaid and invisible work, the double burden — that those answers are built on. Laws and data come from the senior books and official sources.
- Senior chapters: kesy104 (Culture and Socialisation — agencies of socialisation, gender roles, the hidden curriculum); jess403 (Gender, Religion and Caste — the sexual division of labour, the time-use box, feminist movements); keps103 (Equality — the double burden, formal and differential equality); lesy105 (Patterns of Social Inequality and Exclusion — the women's movement); lesy102 (demography — sex ratio).
- Before and next: gess301 (On Equality — Article 15 and dignity); gess303 (whose last pages open this unit); the next chapter, ‘Women Change the World’, carries the story into work, education and the women's movement. Class 8 hess207 (Women, Caste and Reform) and hess308 (Law and Social Justice — labour law and child labour).
- UPSC from this chapter: five questions — Prelims 2019 (Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 — crèches and entitlements); Mains GS1 2019 (continued challenges for women against time and space), GS3 2023 (care economy v monetised economy), GS1 2024 (gender equality, equity and empowerment) and Essay 2023 (girls weighed down by restrictions, boys by demands). List and keys at the end.
| Word | What it means here |
|---|---|
| Identity | A sense of who one is; a person can have several at once — a girl, a sister and a musician (glossary) |
| Gender | The social values and stereotypes a culture attaches to the biological distinction ‘male’ and ‘female’ (Teacher's Note, p. 37) — the chapter itself never uses the word |
| Socialisation | The process by which children learn what their society expects of them; the Teacher's Note says it is socially determined and changes over time |
| Stereotype | A fixed, over-simple idea about what a group is like or should do — ‘girls talk softly’, ‘boys are tough’ |
| Housework | Cooking, cleaning, washing, fetching water and fuel, looking after the home — done mostly by women and usually unpaid |
| Care-giving | Looking after and nurturing — children, the elderly, the sick; physical tasks with a strong emotional side (glossary) |
| Invisible work | Work that is done but not seen or counted as ‘work’, usually because it is unpaid |
| Double burden | Literally a double load: women labouring both inside the home (housework) and outside it (glossary) |
| De-valued | Not given due recognition for a task one has done (glossary) |
| Domestic worker | A person paid to do housework in someone else's home — most are women |
| Anganwadi | A village child-care centre run by the government (book p. 45) † under the Integrated Child Development Services, begun in 1975 |
| Crèche | A day-care facility for young children of working parents, often at or near the workplace |
| Time use survey | A survey recording how people spend each hour of the day — the only way to count unpaid work |
Reading the Unit Three opener and the Teacher's Note on Gender (pages 36–37, in the gess303 PDF)
- Unit opener (p. 36): a pale green page with vertical white stripes and ‘UNIT THREE’; a bold black-and-white drawing of two young people at play, laughing — one with a long plait, one with short hair — hands raised as in a game. The drawing does not tell you which is ‘the boy’ and which ‘the girl’: the point is play shared by both.
- Teacher's Note (p. 37): gender is something we all experience daily — it shapes who we are, where we can go and the choices open to us; we take the roles we see as fixed and natural, but they differ across communities; gender means the social values and stereotypes attached to the biological ‘male’ and ‘female’, and helps explain inequalities and power relations. The two chapters explore it without using the word, through case studies, stories, activities, data and photographs, and deliberately draw boys in, since gender is not about women alone. Chapter 4 shows socialisation is not uniform; that societies value men's and women's work differently; and, through a storyboard, that housework is made invisible and devalued. Chapter 5 turns to work, education and the women's movement.
- The point: the chapter's method is to make the familiar look strange — by comparing times, places and households.
Reading the chapter opener (page 38)
- Illustration (colour): a smiling stick figure with no sign of being a boy or a girl, arms raised, surrounded by objects — jeans and a frock, a hard hat and a broom, a doll and a toy car, a cooking pan and a hammer, a cricket bat and knitting needles with wool, lipstick and a razor, a computer, a book, a purse, keys, a water pot, a screwdriver, flowers, a heart, and a raised fist. A QR code links to the e-book.
- Opening text: being a boy or a girl is an important part of identity; society teaches what each can and cannot do; do all societies see boys and girls the same way? The chapter will look at how roles prepare children for adult life, how women's roles and work are usually valued less, and how inequality emerges in work.
- The point: any of these objects could belong to any child — it is society that sorts them into ‘boys' things’ and ‘girls' things’.
At a glance — the six ideas to carry away
- Many ways of growing up: Samoa, 1920s — no school; children mind siblings from about 5; boys go fishing from about 9; girls mind children till about 14, then gain much more freedom.
- Madhya Pradesh, 1960s: a girls' school built round a secluded courtyard; girls walk home in groups, ‘purposeful’ — boys idle, play and do bicycle tricks on the same street.
- Distinctions start early: cars for boys, dolls for girls, how to dress, ‘talk softly’, ‘be tough’ — telling children they will have different futures; later this shapes subjects and careers.
- ‘My Mother Does Not Work’: a storyboard — when Jaspreet goes on strike, the household collapses. Housework is work: unpaid, invisible, physically demanding, time-consuming.
- Double burden: CSO study (1998–99) — women work 53 hours a week in Haryana (men 40) and 54 in Tamil Nadu (men 44), most of it unpaid housework; domestic workers' days can run 5 a.m. to midnight.
- Government steps: equality is a constitutional principle; anganwadis (child-care centres) and a law requiring crèches where an organisation has more than 30 women employees help women work and girls study.
1. Many ways of growing up: Samoa in the 1920s
In simple wordsAsk your grandmother what she did at age ten and you will hear a different childhood from yours — fetching water, perhaps, or minding cousins, with no tuition classes at all. Neither childhood is the ‘normal’ one; each fitted its time and place. The book takes us much further away — to Pacific islands a hundred years ago — to show how differently children, and especially boys and girls, can be raised.
The Samoan Islands belong to a large group of small islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. According to research reports on Samoan society in the 1920s, children did not go to school; they learnt from older children and adults — how to look after children, how to do household work — and, since fishing was very important, young people learnt to go on long fishing expeditions. They learnt these things at different points in childhood. Once babies could walk, mothers and other adults stopped looking after them; older children, often as young as five, took over — both boys and girls minded their younger siblings. By about nine, a boy joined older boys in outdoor jobs like fishing and planting coconuts. Girls kept looking after small children or running errands for adults until they were teenagers; but once teenagers they had much more freedom — after about fourteen they too went fishing, worked in plantations and learnt to weave baskets. Cooking was done in special cooking-houses, where boys did most of the work while girls helped with the preparations.
⤵ A Samoan childhood in the 1920s, as the book tells it (p. 39)
Infancymothers and other adults look after a baby only until it can walk
From about fiveolder children — boys and girls alike — mind their younger siblings
Boys, about ninejoin older boys: fishing, planting coconuts
Girls, till about fourteenkeep minding children; run errands for adults
Teenage yearsgirls gain much more freedom: fishing trips, plantations, basket-weaving
Cooking-housesboys do most of the cooking; girls help with the preparations
Reading the Samoan photograph and margin question (page 39)
- Photograph (colour): a smiling boy in a red shirt, navy shorts and a sun hat, standing among palm-like plants. Caption: a Class VII Samoan child in his school uniform.
- Margin question: how do Samoan children's and teenagers' experiences differ from yours, and is there anything in them you wish were part of your own growing up? (outline in the in-text section).
- Note the contrast the book leaves for you to see: the 1920s children did not go to school; the boy in the photograph does — Samoan childhood itself has changed.
| Who holds the view (Beyond NCERT) | What they said about Samoan adolescence | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) | adolescence in Samoa was relatively calm and easy-going; the ‘storm and stress’ of Western teenagers is shaped by culture, not biology | fieldwork in 1925–26 on Ta'u, in American Samoa, mainly with adolescent girls |
| Derek Freeman, Margaret Mead and Samoa (1983) | Samoan society was strict, hierarchical and competitive; Mead was misled and her picture was wrong | his own fieldwork in Samoa from the 1940s onward and archival sources |
| Paul Shankman, The Trashing of Margaret Mead (2009), among other anthropologists | Freeman's critique was itself flawed and overstated; Mead's work has limits but was not a hoax | re-examination of both scholars' evidence |
| NCERT (this chapter) | cites unnamed ‘research reports’ on 1920s Samoa only to show that growing up differs between societies and between boys and girls | uses the account as one of two case studies |
Beyond NCERT — Samoa, bare facts
- The islands are today split between Samoa, an independent country since 1 January 1962 (formerly administered by New Zealand), and American Samoa, a territory of the United States.
- The best-known 1920s research on Samoan adolescence is Margaret Mead's; the book does not name its source, and the debate above shows that such accounts are themselves contested. For an exam, cite the book's point (growing up varies across societies), not Mead's conclusions as settled fact.
- Mead's wider argument — that much of what a society calls ‘natural’ for men and women is cultural — is a founding idea of the culture-and-personality school in anthropology (see kesy104).
NCERT details to read carefully — Samoa
- Both boys and girls minded younger siblings from about five — child-care was not a girls-only task at first; the difference opens at about nine.
- Girls had more freedom as teenagers, not less — the reverse of what many readers expect.
- In the cooking-houses boys did most of the cooking — a direct counter-example to ‘cooking is women's work’.
- The ages (five, nine, fourteen) are approximate (‘as young as’, ‘about’, ‘or so’); the source is unnamed and the best-known study is disputed (Mead v Freeman).
2. Growing up male in Madhya Pradesh in the 1960s: schools and streets
In simple wordsWatch a park at 8 p.m. Who is sitting around, chatting, playing cricket under the lights? Who is walking quickly through, phone in hand, heading home? Nobody hands out timetables, yet the park is used very differently by boys and girls. The second case study looks at exactly that — a street after school, sixty years ago, through a boy's eyes.
The second case study is adapted from an account of growing up in a small town in Madhya Pradesh in the 1960s, told by a man about his boyhood. From Class VI, boys and girls went to separate schools. The girls' school was designed very differently: a central courtyard where girls played in total seclusion and safety from the outside world. The boys' school had no courtyard — the playground was just a big space attached to the school. Every evening the boys watched hundreds of schoolgirls crowd the narrow streets: the girls looked purposeful, while boys used the street to stand around, play and try bicycle tricks. For the girls, the street was simply a way to get straight home; they always went in groups, perhaps because they feared being teased or attacked. The book's conclusion from both cases: there are many ways of growing up — we think there is only one because we know our own best, and our elders' childhoods were probably very different — and societies make clear distinctions between boys and girls.
| Comparing the two case studies (pp. 39–40) | Samoa, 1920s | Madhya Pradesh, 1960s |
|---|---|---|
| Schooling | none; learning from older children and adults | separate schools for boys and girls from Class VI |
| Space | girls gain freedom of movement after about fourteen | girls' school secluded; girls use the street only to get home, in groups |
| Who tells the story | ‘research reports’ (unnamed) | a man remembering his boyhood — a boy's-eye view of the girls |
| What it shows | roles change with age and differ for boys and girls | the same public space is used and felt differently by boys and girls |
Reading the schoolgirls photograph and the street-drawing activity (pages 39–40)
- Photograph (colour, p. 39): four schoolgirls in white shirts and navy skirts, plaits down their backs, walking together along a road, books in hand. Caption question: why do girls like to go to school together in groups?
- Activity (p. 40): draw a street or park in your neighbourhood showing what young boys and girls do there. Then: are there as many girls as boys in your drawing? why are there fewer women and girls in streets, parks and markets late in the evening or at night? are boys and girls doing different activities, and why? what if you swapped them? (outlines in the in-text section).
- The point: who uses public space, when and how, is one of the plainest everyday signs of gender — and safety is part of it.
Beyond NCERT — public space and safety, bare facts
- The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (the ‘POSH Act’) followed the Supreme Court's guidelines in Vishaka v State of Rajasthan (1997); it covers workplaces, including homes where domestic workers are employed.
- Women's freedom to use public space safely is the ‘space’ half of UPSC's 2019 GS1 question on women's continued challenges ‘against time and space’; the ‘time’ half is the time-use evidence in section 6.
NCERT details to read carefully — the 1960s account
- The narrator is a boy (‘Growing up male’); the girls' fears are his guess (‘perhaps’), not their own words.
- The girls' courtyard is described as giving safety and seclusion — both protection and restriction; the book does not judge which.
- The account is adapted and dated (1960s, one small town) — an illustration, not a survey.
3. How societies make distinctions: toys, dress and future roles
In simple wordsA birthday shop has a pink aisle and a blue aisle. A child who wanders into the ‘wrong’ aisle gets a look, a joke, maybe a gentle steer back. Nobody forces anything, but after hundreds of such small moments the child knows which aisle — and later which subject, and which job — is ‘for them’. Sociologists call this learning socialisation.
Societies make distinctions between boys and girls from a very young age. Boys are usually given cars to play with and girls dolls; both are fun — so why the difference? Toys become a way of telling children that they will have different futures as men and women. The difference is created in the smallest, most everyday things: how girls must dress, what games boys should play, how girls should talk softly or boys be tough. All these tell children they have specific roles to play as adults, and later in life this affects the subjects we can study and the careers we can choose. In most societies, including ours, the roles men and women play and the work they do are not valued equally; men and women do not have the same status. The rest of the chapter looks at how this difference shows up in work.
⤵ How a small message becomes a life chance (p. 40)
A gifta car for a boy, a doll for a girl
Daily ruleshow to dress, which games, talk softly or be tough
An expectationchildren learn they will have different futures as men and women
Choices narrowedwhich subjects to study, which careers to choose
Unequal valuemen's and women's roles and work valued differently
Unequal statusmen and women do not have the same standing
| Where do differences in boys' and girls' roles come from? — who says what (Beyond NCERT except the first row) | Position |
|---|---|
| NCERT (Teacher's Note, p. 37; chapter, p. 40) | roles are not fixed or natural; they are socially made, differ across communities and change over time — hence the two case studies |
| Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949) | ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ — womanhood is shaped by society |
| Ann Oakley, Sex, Gender and Society (1972) | separates ‘sex’ (biological) from ‘gender’ (social) — the distinction the Teacher's Note uses |
| Some biologists and evolutionary psychologists | some average differences in interests or behaviour have biological roots, which societies then build upon |
| Many sociologists (see kesy104) | biology and society interact; family, school, peers and media are the main agencies through which roles are learnt |
Beyond NCERT — socialisation in the senior books
- kesy104 (Culture and Socialisation) lists the agencies of socialisation — family, peer group, school, mass media, work — and the hidden curriculum, the unwritten lessons a school teaches about gender (who sweeps, who lifts benches).
- jess403 (Gender, Religion and Caste) names the result the sexual division of labour: women do the work inside the home, men outside, and men's work is the one that is paid and seen.
- The Essay paper (2023) set exactly this chapter's theme: ‘Girls are weighed down by restrictions, boys with demands — two equally harmful disciplines.’ The Teacher's Note's insistence on drawing boys in (the ‘be tough’ message) is the boys' half of that topic.
NCERT details to read carefully — distinctions
- The book does not say toys are bad — ‘both toys can be a lot of fun’; its point is the message that the sorting sends.
- The chapter never uses the word ‘gender’ — the Teacher's Note explains this was deliberate. ‘Socialisation’ appears only in the Teacher's Note.
- ‘In most societies, including our own’ — the book says most, not all; Samoa's cooking-houses are its own counter-example.
- The messages are aimed at boys too (‘boys need to be tough’) — gender is not a women-only topic, as the Teacher's Note stresses.
4. ‘My Mother Does Not Work’: the storyboard and valuing housework
In simple wordsNobody notices the school's cleaner until the day the cleaner is absent — then the bins overflow, the floors are muddy and the taps are dry by noon. Work you only see when it stops is invisible work. The storyboard makes a whole family notice it in one day.
The storyboard, ‘My Mother Does Not Work’ (pp. 41–42): Shonali asks her mother, who works in an office, to volunteer for a school excursion; Harmeet's mother always comes, Shonali says, ‘because she doesn't work’. Her mother objects — Jaspreet aunty is up at 5 a.m. every day doing all the housework — but Shonali insists that is ‘not real work’. At the Singhs' house, Harmeet agrees: ‘My mother is a housewife — she does not work!’ Jaspreet decides to go on strike the next day; the children cheer — they will manage with Papa (Harsharan). At 7:30 a.m.: no breakfast, children not ready, Mangala the domestic helper on leave too, the school bus missed, the pump to switch on, the lunch boxes forgotten. At 6.00 p.m.: an exhausted Harsharan makes his own tea, the house ‘looks like it was hit by a hurricane’, no one can find the tea leaves — and Jaspreet must remind them that relatives are coming for dinner. Under Valuing housework the book explains: Harmeet's family did not think Jaspreet's work was real work, and this feeling is not unique. Across the world the main responsibility for housework and care-giving — looking after the family, especially children, the elderly and the sick — lies with women; yet it is not recognised as work, is assumed to come naturally to women, therefore need not be paid for, and society devalues it.
⤵ The storyboard in order (pp. 41–42)
The claimShonali: Harmeet's mother does not work, so she can volunteer; housework is ‘not real work’
The testat the Singhs' house Harmeet agrees; Jaspreet announces a strike for the next day
7:30 a.m.no breakfast, children late, bus missed, pump, lunch boxes — and the helper is on leave
6.00 p.m.an exhausted father, a messy house, no tea leaves, guests due for dinner
What they learnhousework is work — it only seemed invisible
What the book addsthe work is assumed natural to women, unpaid and devalued
Reading the storyboard ‘My Mother Does Not Work’ (pages 41–42)
- Page 41 (green-tinted drawings, nine panels): Shonali and her mother at a table; Shonali's claim and her mother's reply; ‘At the Singh's house’ — the families in a sitting room, Harsharan laughing, Harmeet calling her mother a housewife; Jaspreet, tray of tea glasses in hand, agreeing to strike; the children cheering; ‘Next morning, 7:30 a.m.’ — Harsharan in a turban asking for breakfast while Jaspreet sits reading; the school bus honking; Harsharan at the door shouting about the pump.
- Page 42 (five panels): the lunch-box scramble and the canteen money already given; ‘Evening, 6.00 p.m.’ — the doorbell, Jaspreet reading on the sofa, Harsharan exhausted; the untidy room; Jaspreet, smiling, wondering whether they still believe she does not work.
- The point: work becomes visible the day it is not done. The panels are described, not reproduced.
NCERT details to read carefully — the storyboard
- Shonali's mother works in an office and at home — she is the book's later example of the double burden (p. 44); Harmeet's mother, Jaspreet, is the full-time home-maker who goes on strike. Do not mix them up.
- The Singh household also employs Mangala, a domestic helper — housework is shared between two women, both on leave that day; the men's share is the gap the story exposes.
- Even ‘on strike’, Jaspreet had given the lunch money and remembered the guests — the managing and remembering part of housework is the least visible of all.
- Small slips in the panels (‘beause’, ‘At the Singh's house’) are printing errors, not content.
5. Lives of domestic workers
In simple wordsIf housework is undervalued when a mother does it for free, what happens when someone is paid to do it? The low value travels with the work: the pay is low, the hours are long and the respect is thin. Domestic workers carry the invisible-work problem into the job market.
In the story, Harmeet's mother was not the only one doing the housework: much of it was done by Mangala, the domestic helper. Many homes, particularly in towns and cities, employ domestic workers, who sweep and clean, wash clothes and dishes, cook, and look after young children or the elderly. Most domestic workers are women; sometimes even young boys or girls are employed. Wages are low, as domestic work does not have much value. A domestic worker's day can begin as early as five in the morning and end as late as twelve at night, and employers often show little respect. Melani, a domestic worker, recalls her first job in Delhi with a rich family in a three-storeyed house: the mistress of the house shouted to get work done; Melani worked in the kitchen while two other girls cleaned; the day began at five; breakfast was a cup of tea and two dry rotis, never a third; at night she secretly made extra rotis for the others and herself because they were so hungry; they could not wear chappals in the house, and in winter their feet swelled with cold; she felt scared, and also angry and humiliated — had they not worked all day, and did they not deserve respect? The book then widens the point: housework involves many tasks, many of them heavy physical work — fetching water in villages and towns, carrying headloads of firewood in rural areas, washing, cleaning and sweeping that need bending, lifting and carrying, cooking that means standing for hours at hot stoves.
Reading Melani's photograph and account, and the margin questions (page 43)
- Photograph (colour): a woman with a bindi and a dupatta, standing beside a small girl in a frilly pink dress, against a wall. Caption: Melani with her daughter.
- Melani's account (in italics in the book): summarised above — hunger, cold, fear and humiliation in a rich household; the book quotes her at length, which we do not.
- Margin questions: were Harmeet and Shonali right that Harmeet's mother did not work? what would happen if your mother, or those who do the housework, went on strike for a day? why do men and boys generally not do housework, and should they? (outlines in the in-text section).
- The point: when housework is paid, its low value shows up as low wages and little dignity.
Beyond NCERT — domestic workers and the law (bare facts; check the latest)
- Children: employing children under 14 as domestic servants was prohibited by a notification under the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, from October 2006; the 2016 amendment (now the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act) bars employing children under 14 in any occupation, with narrow exceptions such as helping a family enterprise after school. The book's ‘sometimes even young boys or girls are employed’ describes what happened, not what is lawful (see hess308).
- Harassment: the POSH Act, 2013 covers domestic workers; their complaints go to a district-level Local Committee.
- Internationally: the ILO's Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) sets standards on hours, rest and pay; India has not ratified it.
- Wages: minimum wages are fixed by governments for listed employments; several States include domestic work in their schedules.
NCERT details to read carefully — domestic workers
- ‘Wages are low, as domestic work does not have much value’ — the book links pay directly to how society values the work; that link is the chapter's main argument.
- ‘As early as five … as late as twelve’ is the outer limit (‘can’), not every worker's day.
- Child domestic work: lawful in the book's world of ‘sometimes’, banned under 14 since 2006 (†) — write the law, not the anecdote.
- Physically demanding work — bending, lifting, carrying, standing at hot stoves — is ‘words we normally associate with men’: the book's point is that the association is wrong, not that women are stronger.
6. Invisible, physically demanding, time-consuming: the double burden
In simple wordsTwo students both get home at 4 p.m. One plays and does homework; the other first cooks, washes up and minds a little brother, then does homework past midnight. Their report cards show the same school day — but one worked twice as long. To see the difference you have to count hours, not just pay. That is what a time-use survey does.
Another unrecognised side of housework and care-giving is that it is very time-consuming: add housework to work outside the home and women spend much more time working than men, with much less time for leisure. The book gives data from a special study by the Central Statistical Organization of India (1998–1999) and asks you to fill in the totals. Completed (and asserted in this file): in Haryana, women did 23 hours of paid work and 30 of unpaid housework a week — 53 in all — against men's 38 + 2 = 40; in Tamil Nadu, women 19 + 35 = 54, men 40 + 4 = 44. Women worked 13 and 10 hours a week more, but most of their hours (57% and 65%) were unpaid, while men's were almost all paid. Many women — like Shonali's mother, and the women surveyed — work both inside and outside the home: the double burden of women's work.
| The exercise's three words (p. 47) — what they mean | Example from the chapter |
|---|---|
| Invisible: done but not seen or counted as work, because it is unpaid and assumed ‘natural’ | Harmeet and Shonali: ‘my mother does not work’ — until the strike |
| Physically demanding: needs strength and stamina — lifting, bending, carrying, standing | fetching water; headloads of firewood; washing; standing at hot stoves |
| Time-consuming: takes many hours, leaving little leisure | Jaspreet up at 5 a.m.; women's 53–54 hours a week in the CSO study |
⤵ Filling in the book's table — and reading it (p. 44)
AddHaryana women 23 + 30 = 53; men 38 + 2 = 40. Tamil Nadu women 19 + 35 = 54; men 40 + 4 = 44
Comparewomen work 13 (Haryana) and 10 (Tamil Nadu) hours a week more than men
Splitmost of women's hours are unpaid housework; nearly all of men's are paid
Double burdenwomen labour inside and outside the home
Less leisurelonger total work leaves women less free time
Reading the CSO table and the double-burden note (page 44)
- Table (green shading): State; women paid (work hours per week); women unpaid (housework hours per week); women total — left as ‘?’; the same three columns for men. Rows: Haryana 23, 30, ?, 38, 2, ?; Tamil Nadu 19, 35, ?, 40, 4, ?. Source line: a special study by the Central Statistical Organization of India (1998–1999).
- Margin questions: total weekly work hours for women in each State; how they compare with men's (answered above and in the in-text section).
- Margin note (italic): many women, like Shonali's mother and the surveyed women, work inside and outside the home — the double burden.
- The point: once you count hours, not money, women turn out to work more.
| Should unpaid housework be paid, counted, or shared? — who says what (Beyond NCERT except the first row) | Position |
|---|---|
| NCERT (pp. 42–45) | recognise housework as work; since its low value is part of a larger system of inequality, the government should act — e.g. anganwadis and crèches |
| International Wages for Housework Campaign (from 1972; Selma James, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici) | the state should pay wages for housework, to make visible that it sustains the paid economy |
| Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (1981), among other feminist critics | wages for housework would tie women more firmly to the home; prefer socialised services (child-care, shared housework) |
| Marilyn Waring, If Women Counted (1988) | national accounts that leave out unpaid work make women's labour invisible in policy; count it |
| UN System of National Accounts (2008) | household services produced for own use stay outside GDP's production boundary; they can be valued in separate satellite accounts |
| ILO: 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (2013); Care Work and Care Jobs report (2018) | own-use production (including unpaid housework) is ‘work’, though not ‘employment’; policy should recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care, and reward and represent care workers (the ‘5R’) |
| Supreme Court of India, Kirti v Oriental Insurance (2021) | in accident compensation, a home-maker's unpaid work must be given a notional money value (one opinion cited the 2019 Time Use Survey) |
Beyond NCERT — later time-use data (source and year)
- The book's study was the CSO's pilot Time Use Survey (July 1998–June 1999) in six States: Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya. The CSO has since been merged into the National Statistical Office (NSO).
- NSO's first all-India Time Use Survey, 2019 (report, 2020): of people aged 6 and above, 81.2% of women and 26.1% of men took part in unpaid domestic services for their households, and participants spent on average 299 minutes (women) and 97 minutes (men) a day on them — about three times as long (our arithmetic). A second all-India survey was carried out in 2024; use its report for current figures.
- jess403 reads a different 1998–99 table (daily hours, six States together) — same survey, different cut; do not mix the two.
NCERT details to read carefully — the table
- The figures are hours per week, not per day — 53 hours a week is about 7.6 a day.
- The data are a 1998–99 pilot in six States — old; for current figures cite the NSO Time Use Survey (2019, 2024) †.
- ‘Central Statistical Organization’ — correct for 1998–99; today's body is the NSO.
- Women's paid hours are lower than men's in both States; the point is the total and the unpaid share, not that women do more paid work.
7. Women's work and equality: what the government does
In simple wordsIf every girl in a village has to stay home to mind a baby brother, telling each family ‘send your daughter to school’ will not change much. Open a child-care centre in the village and suddenly many girls can go. Some problems look personal but are shared by thousands of households — and those need a public answer.
The low value attached to women's household and care-giving work is not an individual or family matter; it is part of a larger system of inequality between men and women, so it must be dealt with not only by individuals and families but also by the government. Equality is an important principle of the Constitution, which says being male or female should not be a reason for discrimination. Since inequality between the sexes exists in reality, the government is committed to understanding why and to taking positive steps. For example, it recognises that the burden of child-care and housework falls on women and girls — which affects whether girls can attend school, whether women can work outside the home, and what jobs and careers they can have. So the government has set up anganwadis, or child-care centres, in several villages, and has passed laws making it mandatory for organisations with more than 30 women employees to provide crèche facilities. Crèches help many women take up employment outside the home and make it possible for more girls to attend school.
⤵ How a crèche can send a girl to school (p. 45)
The burdena younger child must be minded during the day
Without helpan older sister stays home, or the mother cannot take a job
Public stepan anganwadi in the village, or a crèche at the mother's workplace
Mothercan take up employment outside the home
Daughteris free to attend school
Reading the anganwadi photograph and the SDG poster (page 45)
- Photograph (colour): a crowded, low-roofed room — dozens of small children seated on the floor, several women among them, a blackboard with Hindi lettering for the anganwadi centre, charts and posters on the walls. Caption: children at an Anganwadi centre in a village in Madhya Pradesh.
- Poster (colour): a red frame headed ‘GOAL 05’ and ‘#SDGs’, a photograph of women in a green field raising their arms, and the words ‘Gender Equality — Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. Caption: Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), www.in.undp.org.
- The point: child-care is public infrastructure, and gender equality is now an international development goal.
Reading the two women's-group posters (page 46)
- Hindi poster (left, black and white): a tall strip of five framed drawings in a folk style — women at a rally, women at work in an office or court, a woman cooking, a woman cycling with a man on a motorcycle, a woman labouring in the rain — beside a short poem. Its gist: I am present everywhere; I can no longer be ignored; which of your achievements has no share of mine? A woman wants her rights. Credit line: Mahila Jagran Kendra, Patna, with a women's welfare organisation in Khagaria (Bihar). Caption question: what do you think this poster is trying to say?
- Bengali poster (right, brown on cream): a woman drawn with many arms, like a goddess image, each hand busy — a baby, a broom, a bucket, a ladle, books, a shopping bag, a bottle; a Bengali line across the top whose gist is with ten hands I toil unpaid, and get insults, taunts and blows. The printed credit appears to read Sachetana, Kolkata. Caption: created by a women's group in Bengal — can you write an interesting slogan for it?
- The point: women's groups use art to make invisible, unpaid work visible — and to tie it to respect and rights. Slogans and poem are summarised, not reproduced.
Beyond NCERT — the laws and schemes behind the book's two examples (check the latest)
- Anganwadis run under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), launched on 2 October 1975, offering supplementary nutrition, pre-school education, immunisation, health check-ups, referral services, and nutrition and health education.
- Crèches: the book's ‘more than 30 women employees’ is the rule in section 48 of the Factories Act, 1948 (factories only). The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 requires every establishment with 50 or more employees to have a crèche, with four visits a day for the mother; it also raised paid maternity leave to 26 weeks (no more than 8 before delivery; 12 weeks for a woman who already has two or more children). These Acts are now consolidated in the labour codes of 2019–20 (the Code on Social Security, 2020, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020).
- Equal pay: Article 39(d) (a Directive Principle); the Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, now subsumed in the Code on Wages, 2019.
- SDG 5 is one of 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2015 for 2030; target 5.4 asks countries to recognise and value unpaid care and domestic work through public services, infrastructure and social protection, and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household.
NCERT details to read carefully — the government's steps
- ‘More than 30 women employees’ is the Factories Act's rule for factories; since 2017 the general crèche rule is 50 or more employees (men and women counted together) under the Maternity Benefit Act †. Safe line: ‘labour laws require crèches at larger workplaces’.
- Maternity leave is 26 weeks since 2017 — not ‘three months before and three months after’ — and crèche visits are four a day, not six (Prelims 2019 †).
- The book's equality principle: Article 15 forbids discrimination on grounds of sex; 15(3) allows special provisions for women and children — crèche rules and anganwadis are examples of such positive steps †.
- SDG 5 is gender equality; SDG 4 is quality education, SDG 8 decent work — do not swap them.
In-text questions and activities — answer outlines
Every margin question, caption question and activity, in page order. Many ask about your own life — the outlines show what to look for, not ‘right’ answers.
(p. 39) In what ways do the experiences of Samoan children and teenagers differ from your own experiences of growing up? Is there anything in this experience that you wish was part of your growing up?
Differences: no school — learning from older children and adults; minding younger siblings from about five; long fishing trips; boys and girls given different jobs at different ages; Samoan girls gaining more freedom as teenagers; boys doing most of the cooking. Most of us go to school, are looked after by adults much longer and may have fewer household responsibilities. Wishes (any, with reason): learning practical skills outdoors; more freedom as a teenager; boys sharing cooking as a matter of course.
(p. 39) Why do girls like to go to school together in groups?
For safety and confidence — a group is less likely to be teased or harassed on the street (the 1960s account suggests this fear); for company and friendship; and because families may allow girls out more readily in groups. The question invites you to notice that boys rarely feel the same need.
(p. 40) Make a drawing of a street or a park in your neighbourhood. Show the different kinds of activities young boys and girls may be engaged in. You could do this individually or in groups.
Draw honestly what you see at a particular time (say, 6 p.m.): who is playing, sitting, running errands, walking through; label activities and count boys and girls. Note the time of day — it matters for the next questions.
(p. 40) Are there as many girls as boys in your drawing? Can you think of reasons why there are fewer women and girls in your neighbourhood streets, parks and markets in the late evenings or at night?
Usually fewer girls. Reasons: fear of harassment or attack and families' worries about safety; poorly lit streets; girls expected to be home earlier; girls busier with housework in the evening; the idea that public space after dark ‘belongs’ to men. Some reasons are about real risk, some about social rules — say which is which.
(p. 40) Are girls and boys doing different activities? Can you think of reasons why this might be so? What would happen if you replaced the girls with the boys and vice-versa?
Often boys play sport or hang about, girls walk through, run errands or sit in small groups. Reasons: different expectations learnt at home and school, different freedom of movement, different chores. If swapped, the picture would look ‘odd’ to many people — which shows the roles are customs we have learnt, not natural facts.
(p. 43) Were Harmeet and Shonali correct in saying that Harmeet's mother did not work?
No. Jaspreet works from 5 a.m. — cooking, getting children ready, managing the household, planning for guests. The strike showed the household could not run without her. The children confused ‘work’ with ‘paid work outside the home’.
(p. 43) What do you think would happen if your mother or those involved in doing the work at home went on a strike for a day?
List what they do in a day — cooking, cleaning, washing, fetching water, shopping, minding children or elders, remembering bills and visitors — and imagine each undone: no meals, late for school, chaos by evening. The exercise makes the hours and the planning visible.
(p. 43) Why do you think that men and boys generally do not do housework? Do you think they should?
Why: the belief that housework comes ‘naturally’ to women; boys not taught or expected to do it; men's paid work treated as more important; fear of being mocked. Should they? The book's logic points to sharing: housework is real, demanding and time-consuming work, and sharing it would reduce women's double burden and give girls time for school. Give your reasoned view.
(p. 44) What are the total number of work hours spent by women in Haryana and Tamil Nadu each week?
Haryana: 23 paid + 30 unpaid = 53 hours a week. Tamil Nadu: 19 + 35 = 54 hours a week.
(p. 44) How does this compare with the total number of work hours spent by men?
Men: Haryana 38 + 2 = 40; Tamil Nadu 40 + 4 = 44. Women work 13 and 10 hours a week more, but most of their work is unpaid housework, while nearly all of men's is paid — so women's longer hours stay invisible and leave them less leisure.
(p. 46) What do you think this poster is trying to say?
The Hindi poster says women are present in every part of life — protest, office, kitchen, road, field — so their contribution cannot be ignored; no achievement is without their share; therefore women demand their rights. It links invisible work to the claim for equal rights and recognition.
(p. 46) This poster was created by a women's group in Bengal. Can you write an interesting slogan for the poster?
The many-armed woman does everything at once. Sample slogans (write your own): ‘Ten hands at work — and not one paid’; ‘She does it all — count it all’; ‘Share the work, share the respect’.
Exercises (page 47) — answer outlines
Four exercises and a four-term glossary. Try first, then open.
1(a). True or false, with an example: All societies do not think similarly about the roles that boys and girls play.
True. In 1920s Samoa boys did most of the cooking and teenage girls had much freedom; in 1960s Madhya Pradesh girls were secluded in their school courtyard and used the street only to go home.
1(b). True or false, with an example: Our society does not make distinctions between boys and girls when they are growing up.
False. From a young age boys get cars and girls dolls; girls are told to talk softly and dress in certain ways, boys to be tough — and later this affects the subjects and careers they choose.
1(c). True or false, with an example: Women who stay at home do not work.
False. Jaspreet, a home-maker, is up at 5 a.m. doing housework; when she went on strike the household fell apart. In the CSO study, women did 30–35 hours of unpaid housework a week.
1(d). True or false, with an example: The work that women do is less valued than that of men.
True. Housework and care-giving are unpaid and not counted as work; domestic workers, mostly women, are paid little and shown little respect — Melani's account.
2. Housework is invisible and unpaid work; physically demanding; time consuming. Write in your own words what is meant by the terms 'invisible', 'physically demanding', and 'time consuming'. Give one example of each based on the household tasks undertaken by women in your home.
Invisible: work that is done but not noticed or counted as work, because it earns no money and is taken for granted — e.g. planning meals, remembering what is needed, minding a sick grandparent. Physically demanding: needing strength and stamina — e.g. carrying water, washing clothes by hand, sweeping and mopping, standing at a stove. Time-consuming: taking many hours — e.g. cooking three meals a day from scratch; the CSO study's 30–35 hours of housework a week. Use your own home's examples.
3. Make a list of toys and games that boys typically play and another for girls. If there is a difference between the two lists, can you think of some reasons why this is so? Does this have any relationship to the roles children have to play as adults?
Typical lists: boys — cars, guns, cricket, football, construction sets, video games; girls — dolls, kitchen sets, skipping, hopscotch, dressing up. Reasons: what parents and shops offer; what friends tease about; what adults around them do. Link to adult roles: the book says toys tell children they will have different futures — dolls and kitchen sets rehearse care and housework, cars and building sets rehearse outside, technical and paid work; later this shapes subjects and careers.
4. If you have someone working as a domestic help in your house or locality talk to her and find out a little bit more about her life — Who are her family members? Where is her home? How many hours does she work? How much does she get paid? Write a small story based on these details.
Ask politely and with permission; respect privacy (no full names or addresses in your story). Note her family, where she comes from (many migrate from villages), her working hours (count from first to last job of the day), number of houses, pay, days off, how she manages her own home and children — her own double burden. Write a short, respectful story; compare with Melani's account.
Reading the exercise page and glossary (page 47)
- Exercise 1: the four statements (a)–(d) are printed in the right-hand margin in blue; exercise 2 follows straight after, so the numbering looks run together.
- Glossary (boxed): identity, double-burden, care-giving, de-valued — all in the key-terms table above. Its example of ‘de-valued’ is a boy whose handmade gift goes unremarked — again drawing boys into the discussion.
Keys and slips to handle with care
- Stored key, verified: Prelims 2019 (c) — only ‘women with two children get reduced entitlements’ is right (12 weeks for a woman who already has two or more children); leave is 26 weeks, not three months plus three, and crèche visits are four a day, not six. Wording trap: ‘two children’ means two already living, so the reduction applies from the third. Mains and Essay carry no key.
- Book points with safe lines: the crèche rule ‘more than 30 women employees’ is the Factories Act's — since 2017, 50+ employees (Maternity Benefit Act); the CSO data are a 1998–99 pilot (NSO surveys 2019, 2024); the Samoan source is unnamed and the best-known study is disputed; child domestic work under 14 is banned (2006; all occupations since 2016).
⤵ Answer frame for a GS1/GS3 question on women's unpaid work or the care economy
Defineunpaid domestic and care work; care economy v monetised economy; the double burden
EvidenceTime Use Survey 2019: 299 v 97 minutes a day (NSO); CSO 1998–99 for history; cite source and year
Causessocialisation and stereotypes; work assumed ‘natural’ to women; outside the GDP boundary
Public actionanganwadis/ICDS, crèches (2017 Act), maternity benefit, care jobs, SDG 5.4
Positionspay (Wages for Housework), count (Waring, satellite accounts), share (ILO 5R) — attributed
Way forwardrecognise, reduce, redistribute — framed through official reports, without characterising any party or government
What to remember
Numbers
Chapterbook pp. 38–47 (10-page PDF); Unit Three, Gender — opener and Teacher's Note on pp. 36–37 in gess303's PDF
Samoa, 1920s (book)no school; minding siblings from ~5; boys fishing and planting from ~9; girls minding children till ~14, then much more freedom
Madhya Pradesh, 1960s (book)separate schools from Class VI; girls' school round a secluded courtyard
StoryboardJaspreet up at 5 a.m.; the strike shows at 7:30 a.m.; 6.00 p.m. chaos
Domestic worker's daycan run 5 a.m. to 12 midnight = up to 19 hours (asserted)
CSO study, 1998–99 (hours a week)Haryana women 23 + 30 = 53, men 38 + 2 = 40; Tamil Nadu women 19 + 35 = 54, men 40 + 4 = 44 (asserted)
Women work more+13 h (Haryana), +10 h (Tamil Nadu) a week; 57% and 65% of their hours unpaid (asserted)
Crèche rule (book)organisations with more than 30 women employees — † Factories Act, s. 48
Time Use Survey 2019 †unpaid domestic services: women 299 min/day, men 97 (aged 6+, participants); 81.2% v 26.1% take part; next survey 2024
Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 †26 weeks (≤ 8 before delivery); 12 weeks from the third child; crèche at 50+ employees; 4 visits a day
ICDS †launched 2 October 1975 — anganwadis
Constitution †Art 15(1) no discrimination on grounds of sex; 15(3) special provisions; 39(d) equal pay; 42 maternity relief; 51A(e) dignity of women
Laws †Equal Remuneration Act 1976 (now Code on Wages 2019); POSH Act 2013 (after Vishaka, 1997); child domestic work under 14 banned 2006, all occupations 2016
SDG 5 †gender equality — one of 17 SDGs adopted Sept 2015, for 2030; target 5.4 unpaid care and domestic work
Debates †Mead (1928) v Freeman (1983); de Beauvoir (1949); Oakley (1972); Wages for Housework (1972); Waring (1988); ILO C189 (2011); Kirti (2021)
One-liners
- There are many ways of growing up; we think there is one because we know our own.
- Societies make distinctions between boys and girls from a very young age.
- Toys, dress and manners tell children they will have different futures as men and women.
- These early distinctions later shape the subjects and careers people choose.
- In most societies the roles and work of men and women are not valued equally.
- Housework and care-giving fall mainly on women and are not recognised as work.
- Housework is unpaid, invisible, physically demanding and time-consuming.
- Domestic workers, mostly women, work long hours for low wages and little respect.
- Women working inside and outside the home carry a double burden.
- Because the inequality is systemic, the government acts — anganwadis and crèches.
Traps to avoid
- The CSO table is in hours per week, not per day.
- The crèche rule in the book (30+ women) is the Factories Act's; since 2017 it is 50+ employees under the Maternity Benefit Act.
- Maternity leave is 26 weeks, not three months plus three; crèche visits are four a day, not six.
- In 1920s Samoa boys did most of the cooking, and teenage girls had more freedom, not less.
- Both Samoan boys and girls minded younger siblings from about five.
- Shonali's mother works in an office; Harmeet's mother Jaspreet is the home-maker who strikes.
- The chapter never uses the word ‘gender’; the Teacher's Note does.
- The 1998–99 data are a six-State pilot; the first all-India Time Use Survey was in 2019.
- Employing a child under 14 as a domestic worker is illegal (2006; all occupations since 2016).
- SDG 5 is gender equality; SDG 4 is education.
How to strategise
Prelims — what UPSC asks
- From this chapter: crèches and maternity entitlements — Prelims 2019 on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 (26 weeks, four crèche visits, 12 weeks from the third child). The book's crèche sentence is the hook; the numbers are Beyond NCERT.
- Elsewhere: equal pay for equal work as a Directive Principle (2006) on keps202 and jess403; the Global Gender Gap Index (2017, World Economic Forum) and SDG questions (2016) belong with current affairs and leps106. Watch for ICDS, anganwadi and SDG 5 targets in statement questions.
Mains — where it appears and how to answer
- From this chapter: GS3 2023 (care economy v monetised economy) — invisible housework, the double burden, anganwadis and crèches as ways to bring care into the paid economy; GS1 2019 (women's challenges ‘against time and space’) — time-use data and the street case study; GS1 2024 (gender equality, equity and empowerment) — the book's ‘positive steps’ as equity measures; Essay 2023 (girls weighed down by restrictions, boys with demands) — the chapter's two case studies and toy-and-manner messages, boys included.
- Elsewhere: patriarchy and the middle-class working woman (GS1 2014) and patriarchy as the least-noticed inequality (Essay 2020) on keps103, kesy102/kesy201 and lesy105; adverse sex ratio (GS1 2014) on lesy102 and jess403; the women's movement and lower strata (GS1 2018) on lesy105 and lesy208.
- Keep answers neutral: data with source and year (CSO 1998–99, NSO 2019 and 2024); positions on paying for housework or the origins of gender roles attributed to named scholars, campaigns, the ILO or courts; no characterisation of any present-day party or government.
Self-check
Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.
1. In the book's account of Samoa in the 1920s, who did most of the cooking in the cooking-houses?
2. Using the book's CSO table, the total weekly work hours of women in Haryana were:
3. The ‘double burden’ of women's work refers to:
4. Under the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, a crèche is required in establishments with at least:
5. Which Sustainable Development Goal is about gender equality?
6. Which is NOT one of the three features of housework the exercise asks about?
UPSC questions from this chapter
Open any question to attempt it in the Question bank — your attempt is saved to your progress.