Work Intensity

Work Intensity is defined as activity in relation to the capacity for that work. It is a topic that affects developed and developing countries in different ways. There are many aspects to work intensity including multitasking, time poverty, health implications, and policy considerations. Multitasking is the overlap of many activities, usually care and informal work, that negatively impacts the livelihood of people, especially women, in the developing world. Time Poverty is defined as the lack of time for leisure and rest activities after time spent working. High work intensity coupled with multitasking and time poverty has a negative correlation with health outcomes. Work intensity is seldom considered when proposing new policy and legislation. As more women enter the workforce, work intensity and its implications are being brought to the forefront of policy, development, and empowerment debates.

Due to the nature of work intensity and multitasking, women tend to be more affected than men. Work intensity is amplified by multitasking as women put forth more effort per unit of time through the performance of two or more tasks simultaneously. Women assume productive, reproductive, and managing roles in their communities, thus the demand for their time is greater. Each role requires a different amount of intensity, and the magnitude of the amount of work that women in the developing world complete is often disregarded. Current time use data and research ignores the multiplicity of roles and duties performed by women in developing nations, thus, the extent in which women multitask is vastly underreported. This creates an unfair distribution of work between men and women as women chiefly deal with the functioning of the familial unit.

While multitasking and its effects influence all socioeconomic classes, the lower, working classes tend to bear the burden of its distresses. Multitasking, more often than not, is used to mitigate the effects of low incomes. Families that cannot afford other means to take care of the daily ins and outs of running a household rely on women to complete everyday chores and care. In addition, families suffering from poverty are more likely to have both parents work, compounding the amount of labor done by women. However, the alternative to multitasking can leave women and their families in deeper poverty.

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