Tool: Participatory Exercise in Gender Analysis: Women's Time Management
The following tool is a participatory exercise that may be used when conducting gender analysis with the participation of client communities. It helps analyse women’s time constraints.
Purpose: To determine the tasks women perform, the sequence in which they do them, how long each activity takes, and whether the most time-consuming activities are considered to be a problem.
Time: 1 to 2 hour
Audience: Primarily community members (either all women or mixed groups); also useful for trainers, project staff and field workers.
Materials needed:
- Cards that depict different tasks which women perform during their daily routines, such as: cooking, sweeping, carrying water, harvesting, washing clothes, caring for child, making dung patties.
- Match-sticks
How to conduct the exercise:
[Note: This exercise can be conducted with groups of men who are asked to assess women's time constraints. As an alternative, the pictures can be redrawn to represent a man's daily routine.]
- Lay the cards on the ground.
- Ask the participants to sort the cards by categorising them under the three large drawings in columns, according to whether the task is generally performed by a man, a woman, or both.
- Next, provide the group with match-sticks. A full match-stick represents an hour; a half match-stick represents half an hour. Ask the group to determine how long each chore takes by placing match-sticks on the respective cards.
- Discuss the findings with the group and let them summarise what was learned.
- Discuss the most time-consuming chores and whether they are considered to be problematic. Ask the group which problems they would first like to consider and solve. Ask how they would change their daily routine if they had water closer to their home.
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