There are many aspects to work intensity including multitasking, time poverty, health implications, and policy considerations.
Multitasking is the overlap of many activities, usually care and informal work, that negatively impacts the livelihood of people, especially women, in the developing world.
[3] High work intensity coupled with multitasking and time poverty has a negative correlation with health outcomes.
As more women enter the workforce, work intensity and its implications are being brought to the forefront of policy, development, and empowerment debates.
[3] Work intensity is amplified by multitasking as women put forth more effort per unit of time through the performance of two or more tasks simultaneously.
[5] Women assume productive, reproductive, and managing roles in their communities, thus the demand for their time is greater.
In addition, families suffering from poverty are more likely to have both parents work, compounding the amount of labor done by women.
[3] Economists are beginning to take note of the importance of correctly quantifying multitasking by looking at the role of care and unpaid work.
Women complete over sixty percent of unpaid household work, which is almost never factored into any productive measure and overlooked.
[3] This grim alternative leaves women with no other choice than to be incessantly working, often on several projects at once (internal link to multitasking).
As development policy slowly transitions from an income-based approach to one that is capability-based, the reduction of capabilities in time impoverished women becomes increasingly important.
In addition, lower class women generally take on higher degrees of work intensity.
Of the poverty eradication policies currently in place, very few of them incorporate work intensity into their reduction strategies and can often actually worsen conditions for citizens of developing countries.
A big issue facing policymakers is the inadequacy of the way gender equality and time use are currently measured.