Labour Market Flexibility and Women's Time Allocation

The study examines the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of time use of women workers in the formal and informal segments of the leather footwear industry in Pondicherry district. The quantitative dimension of time use deals with how much time women workers spend for different activities, outside the household and within it, and qualitative dimension deals with the organizational aspects of work. Our study focuses on women's time allocation to market work and domestic work in the context of flexible production systems and labour market flexibility. There are indications of some shift of women's employment from formal to informal sector and the shift has meant growing access to work in informal subcontracting units under varying forms of flexibility' and poor working conditions. The study, based on field work among women workers in the export-oriented footwear industry in Pondicherry, also draws on secondary material on women's employment and the literature on time allocation.We found that there were considerable differences in work organisation along the lines of nature of employment (formal or informal) age and marital status of women workers.