Gendered Time Use in Agricultural and Nutritional Outcomes
Summary
Gendered patterns of time use in rural agrarian settings shape both agricultural productivity and nutritional status, with women bearing a disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work alongside farm labour. Seasonal peaks in cropping demand often force women to trade off hours devoted to child care, meal preparation and personal rest, leading to energy deficits and adverse dietary intake. Conversely, participation in nutrition-sensitive agricultural programmes can expand women’s control over resources and improve household feeding practices, albeit sometimes at the cost of additional time burdens. Intrahousehold labour allocation reflects local norms, power relations and household composition: women’s agency in decision-making is decisive in balancing productive and reproductive responsibilities. Global research underscores the need to recognise time as a scarce resource, to measure both paid and unpaid work, and to integrate gender-responsive scheduling, mechanisation and support services such as childcare. Effective policy and programme design must address the complexity of seasonal workloads, cultural expectations and resource constraints to safeguard women’s health and optimise agricultural–nutrition pathways on a worldwide scale.
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Gendered Time Use in Agricultural and Nutritional Outcomes publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in gendered time use in agricultural and nutritional outcomes across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Time poverty: A condition in which individuals have insufficient discretionary time due to overlapping demands of paid, unpaid and care work.
Nutrition-sensitive agriculture: Agricultural interventions explicitly designed to enhance dietary quality and nutritional status through production, processing and consumption pathways.
Intrahousehold labour allocation: The distribution of productive and reproductive tasks among household members, often structured by gender, age and power relations.
Seasonality: Periodic fluctuations in agricultural workload and food availability that affect labour demands and nutritional risk throughout the year.
References
- The burdens of participation: A mixed-methods study of the effects of a nutrition-sensitive agriculture program on women’s time use in Malawi. World Development (2023).
- Seasonal time trade-offs and nutrition outcomes for women in agriculture: Evidence from rural India. Food Policy (2021).
- Who has the time? A qualitative assessment of gendered intrahousehold labor allocation, time use and time poverty in rural Senegal. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems (2023).
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