Time Banking

Time Banking

The conception of Time Banking

• Time banking comes forward as a social innovation for increased empowerment of women.
• Traditionally, household chores are expected to be performed by women. Women in general are more time poor than men.
• Empowerment of women is limited by time poverty. In this context the concept of time banking was introduced.
• Time banking can be viewed as an opportunity cost of an unpaid activity in terms of the time sacrificed.

How does time bank function?

• In time banks, one hour equals one time credit, regardless of the service being performed or the level of each person’s skill or gender.
• The time banks are time-sharing cooperative among women, with people helping each other meet their day-to-day needs and address challenges in their community.
• For each hour of a service exchanged, the service provider receives one, time credit and the beneficiary pays one, time credit.
• The time bank networks tap into unused resources of people in the community to fill unmet needs of each other.

Defining Work

• ‘Work’ was defined by Spanish economist Lourdes Beneria in 1999 as a paid economic activity linked to the market.
• Both paid and unpaid work, however, are constituents of our economic life.
• This leads to an ecosystem where unpaid and care work, performed for long hours, becomes invisible.

Narrative of Unpaid Work

• Women perform 75 per cent of the world’s unpaid care work, and unfortunately it is not accounted for in a nation’s gross domestic product.
• The largest source of women’s unpaid labour is domestic work.
• These include household chores like grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning as well as caregiving to the children, elderly and infirm.
• In the absence of this, survival is perceived as a challenge for both individuals and society as every economy is dependent on unpaid labour and care services.

Time Poverty and unpaid work

• This share of labour has a cost not only in terms of the unrecognised monetary value but also time poverty.
• Time poverty is defined as “not having enough time” to pursue interests beyond unpaid domestic / care work.
• Time poverty has a direct bearing on the ability of women to contribute to or participate in the labour market and / or public or political life.
• Time poverty is also responsible for insufficient political participation of women globally.

Issues with unpaid work

• Unpaid labour is not considered ‘real work’ and is often devalued by the men and society, who directly benefit from it.
• The situation leads to emotional strain and combined with the time poverty, the costs often outweigh the benefits.
• Often, women do not find enough time or motivation to participate in activities outside the household.
• Female labour force participation rate is on a declining trend in major economies.

Significance of time banking for women

• Time-banking can benefit women, their families and their communities by alleviating time poverty through the system of exchange services through time credits.
• The system has the potential to improve the livelihoods of women and their families, thereby increasing overall economic activities.
• There were time banks operating in more than 30 countries in the Americas, Africa and Europe as well as in Russia and China.
• Most case studies showed that time banks have functioned most as community-building tools, economic drivers or within elder care.
• They can also be utilised to prioritise women’s political participation.
• This has a direct impact on women empowerment and entails benefits to individual women, their families and communities.
• Time bank networks can be utilised for increasing political participation of women in the following ways:
• Directly:Through utilisation of time credits for campaigning for office
• Indirectly: By educating themselves or others on local issues or understanding their rights, accessing government programs and mobilising others.

Way forward

• Across the world, there are examples in our everyday life of intra- and inter-family examples of informal time-sharing.
• However, for tangible results on a community or economy scale, the concept needs scaling up and formalisation.
• Time banking, if made a formal arrangement, has the potential of community building, civic inclusiveness and increasing economic activity.
• Above all, it has the potential to act as the catalyst to women empowerment by formally recognising the economic value of unpaid labour and tapping the same across communities.