Feminist Everyday Observatory Tool

Studying labour/time is an important research area, which allows us to make sense of the rhythms of everyday life of people in different contexts and societies. It is also a complex task that address the result of the research question, which inquires how and why people spend their time on social reproduction. Answering this question requires a systematic methodology involving both qualitative and quantitative research methods. In this Toolkit we make the argument for bringing two important methodologies that study the everyday – Time-Use Surveys and Shadowing – to develop an a Feminist Everyday Observatory Tool.

We discuss the strengths of Time-use Survey and Shadowing as methodologies and show where the gaps lie in their design and how to address these. We then introduce a Three Step Method that we have developed through trialling this methodology in four pilot studies – in India, Ukraine, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. We examine the challenges that our Feminist Everyday Observatory Tool method poses for researchers as well as its advantages and suggest that it is an important contribution to the methodological toolkit for researchers of the everyday and of gender structures of time, space, violence and social reproduction.