To help participants to analyse how their time is used each day.
- Draw a daily timetable from sunrise to sunset.
- Ask participants to fill in their daily routine using single words or picture showing, when they sleep, do housework, do farm work, relax, collect water, collect wood, go to school, etc.
- This can be done by different groups in the community (men/women, old/young) to compare the different ways in which they spend their time.
- It can also be interesting to ask each group to do a chart for the other group (as well as for themselves) so that the group’s self-perception can be compared to how others perceive their workload.
In this video, Harriet Gimbo of ActionAid Uganda describes how she has used the daily activity chart in her work:
Questions for analysis
- What do you regard as work?
- Which of these brings income or is paid for?
- What work do men do that women don’t do? Why?
- What work do women do that men don’t do? Why?
- Who does most work men, women, young, and old ?why?
- Is there a fair division of labour? If not, why not?
- Is there some work which could be more equally shared? If yes, how?
- Can anyone work harder than they are doing at the moment?
- What income generating work could men and women do if they had more time as result of a fairer division of labour?
- To include a focus upon child or youth rights, you can use the following questions for analysis:
- At what age do children/ young people start working?
- What are the best/worst types of work for young people? Why?
- Who does most work – young men or young women? Why?
Suggestions for use
- A daily activity chart could be used to track language or literacy use during the course of a day, looking at when people need to use literacy or speak in the official language.
- A daily activity chart could be used to look at income and expenditure over the course of a day – when do you spend money and when do you earn it?
- Daily activity charts were successfully used in ActionAid's Unpaid Care Work project. The charts and symbols were standardised for easy comparison.
- Daily activity charts can be used as evidence of the status quo, of change over time, or of situations in different countries. This requires the process to be rigorously recorded. The facilitator must write down who took part in the exercise; their names, gender and role. Each participant should have been explained the ethical procedure and signed informed consent. a representative sample of the population will also need to be taken. Evidence can then be used in quantiative form. For example, 80% of women participants spend on average 200minutes a day on housework. This type of evidence can be visulised and is effective at getting the attention of decision makers., influencing them to change. The potentially visual nature also helps to communicate learnings to other communities.
- Communication & Power, ActionAid, 2003, p. 1002.
- Reflect Mother Manual, ActionAid International, 1996, p. 216-7.
- Unpaid Care Work Resource Guide.