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Three Essays On “Doing Care”, Gender Differences In The Work Day, And Women’S Care Work In The Household, Avanti Mukherjee

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation provides a theoretical perspective on why women’s responsibility for care work lengthens their workday relative to men due to subsistence requirements, and draws attention to the relevance of other female family members. Building from theories of institutional bargaining research insights from “doing gender”, I develop a theoretical perspective on “doing care” that considers both bargaining power and social norms as determinants of differences in time allocation across and within gender. Conventional bargaining models predict that women who earn incomes can substitute hours of paid work for unpaid work. Using qualitative field work from India, and my theory of …