Open Access
Research Article
Mapping the literature on women’s unpaid work : A bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer
*Sukhpreet Kaur JaggiCorresponding authorsukhpreetkaur.jaggi@gmail.comSymbiosis School of Economics (SSE) Symbiosis International (Deemed University) (SIU) SB RoadPune, Maharashtra, IndiaView full profile → , Deepa Jitendra Guptadeepa.gupta@sse.ac.inSymbiosis School of Economics (SSE) Symbiosis International (Deemed University) (SIU) SB RoadPune, Maharashtra, IndiaView full profile →
* Corresponding author · click or hover a name for details
- Published Online:
- 02 Jun 2025
- Article type:
- Research Article
- Language:
- EN
- Article no.:
- CJSIM-2024-021
- Pages:
- 41–57
Abstract
The role of women has transformed from primary caregivers to primary earners in the society. The growth of studies on women’s issues has been continuous research since decades. The research interest in unpaid work has seen increased collaboration, profound familiarity with influential authors, and access to relevant literature, especially for new researchers focusing on this issue. The present paper has performed a bibliometric analysis and maps the research landscape based on the published literature on women’s unpaid work, using R-biblioshiny program and VOS viewer software. It analyses, citation patterns authorship and affiliation and other parameters. The study is based on 1281 articles on women’s unpaid work drawn from the Scopus database, published between 2001and 2024.The study on women’s unpaid labour shows a rising trajectory with an increased volume of productive growth. More citations are from “Feminist Economics” journal, and identified 10 authors, the most co-cited cluster of researchers in the said field. The authors’ affiliations include prestigious institutions such as the University of Oxford, Flinders University, Stockholm University, and Australian National University. The study finds international collaboration more among authors from the USA, India, Australia, the U.K., Spain, Germany and Canada. The study has identified important keywords in the area, that includes “time poverty,” “parenthood,” “informal care,” “time allocation,” and “work-life balance.”
Keywords
References
[1] L Addati, U Cattaneo, V Esquivel, I Valarino, Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO, pp. 40 (2018).[2] P. Chauhan, “Gendering COVID-19: Impact of the pandemic on women’s burden of unpaid work in India,” Gender Issues, vol. 38, pp. 395–419 (2020).[3] A. Langer, A. Meleis, F. Knaul, R. Atun, R, Aran M, Arreola-Ornelas H, Bhutta ZA, Binagwaho A, Bonita R, Caglia JM, Claeson M, Davies J, Donnay FA, Gausman JM, Glickman C, Kearns AD, Kendall T, Lozano R, Seboni N, Sen G, Sindhu S, Temin M, Frenk J. Women and Health: the key for sustainable development. Lancet. 2015 Sep 19; 386(9999):1165-210. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60497-4. Epub 2015 Jun 4. PMID: 26051370.[4] G. Tasnim, “Making women’s unpaid care work visible in India: Importance and challenges,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 28-35 (2020). [5] A. Oakley, Woman’s Work: The Housewife. New York, NY, USA: Pantheon Books (1974).[6] J. Ervin, Y. Taouk, L. F. Alfonzo, B. Hewitt, and T. King, “Gender differences in the association between unpaid labour and mental health in employed adults: A systematic review,” The Lancet Public Health, vol. 7, no. 9, pp. e775–e786 (2022).[7] S. Tripathi, S. Azhar, and F. Zhai, “Unpaid care work among women in South Asia: A systematic review,” Asian Social Work and Policy Review, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 275–289 (2022).[8] D. Grant-Smith and P. McDonald, “Ubiquitous yet ambiguous: An integrative review of unpaid work,” International Journal of Management Reviews, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 559–578 (2018).[9] S. Çakir and P. D. Güre, “Women’s employment: A bibliometric approach,” Ekonomik Yaklaşım, vol. 35, no. 130 (2024).[10] V. N. Gonçalves, M. C. Ponchio, and R. G. Basílio, “Women’s financial well-being: A systematic literature review and directions for future research,” International Journal of Consumer Studies, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 824–843 (2021).[11] P. Schaer, “Applied informetrics for digital libraries: An overview of foundations, problems and current approaches,” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, pp. 267-281 (2013).[12] P. Kokol and H. B. Vošner, “Historical, descriptive and exploratory analysis of application of bibliometrics in nursing research,” Nursing Outlook, vol. 67, no. 6, pp. 680–695 (2019).[13] G. Surwase, A. Sagar, B. S. Kademani, and K. Bhanumurthy, “Co-citation analysis: An overview,” in Proc. Beyond Librarianship Creativity, Innovation and Discovery., pp. 179-185 (Sept. 2011).[14] K. Power, “The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the care burden of women and families,” Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 67–73 (2020).[15] L. Craig and B. Churchill, “Dual-earner parent couples’ work and care during COVID-19,” Gender, Work & Organization, vol. 28, pp. 66–79 (2021).[16] M. Y. Kan, O. Sullivan, and J. Gershuny, “Gender convergence in domestic work: Discerning the effects of interactional and institutional barriers from large-scale data,” Sociology, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 234–251 (2011).[17] L. Craig and K. Mullan, “Parenthood, gender and work-family time in the United States, Australia, Italy, France, and Denmark,” Journal of Marriage and Family, vol. 72, no. 5, pp. 1344–1361 (2010).[18] S. Chant, “The ‘feminization of poverty’ and the ‘feminisation’ of anti-poverty programmes: Room for revision?,” The Journal of Development Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 165–197 (2008).[19] J. E. Yavorsky, C. M. Kamp Dush, and S. J. Schoppe-Sullivan, “The production of inequality: The gender division of labor across the transition to parenthood,” Journal of Marriage and Family, vol. 77, no. 3, pp. 662–679 (2015).[20] H. Mandel and M. Semyonov, “Family policies, wage structures, and gender gaps: Sources of earnings inequality in 20 countries,” American Sociological Review, vol. 70, no. 6, pp. 949–967 (2005).[21] N. Folbre, “Measuring care: Gender, empowerment, and the care economy,” Journal of Human Development, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 183–199 (2006). [22] M. Hirst, “Carer distress: A prospective, population-based study,” Social Science & Medicine, vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 697–708 (2005).[23] M. J. Budig, J. Misra, and I. Boeckmann, “The motherhood penalty in cross-national perspective: The importance of work–family policies and cultural attitudes,” Social Politics, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 163–193 (2012).[24] Z. Gu, F. Meng, and M. Farrukh, “Mapping the research on knowledge transfer: A scientometrics approach,” IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 34647–34659 (2021).[25] N. J. Van Eck and L. Waltman, “Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping,” Scientometrics, vol. 84, no. 2, pp. 523–538 (2010).[26] M. J. Mattingly and S. M. Blanchi, “Gender differences in the quantity and quality of free time: The U.S. experience,” Social Forces, vol. 81, no. 3, pp. 999–1030 (2003).[27] L. Irani and V. Vemireddy, “Getting the measurement right! Quantifying time poverty and multitasking from childcare among mothers with children across different age groups in rural north India,” Asian Population Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 94-116 (2020).
Views: 138Downloads: 4Citations: 0




