¿Qué detiene el tiempo de las mujeres? Infraestructura hídrica, cuidado y no participación económica en Bolivia[What Stops Women’s Time? Water Infrastructure, Care, and Economic Non-Participation in Bolivia]

This article examines the relationship between household water access and distribution conditions, gender, and economic non-participation due to domestic and care work in Bolivia. The analysis uses the full analytical universe of 7,325,783 people aged 15 to 65 living in private dwellings, built from the 2024 Population and Housing Census microdata. It estimates logit models with departmental fixed effects, age, schooling, and rural residence, together with extended specifications that add material household controls and sensitivity checks using Probit and linear probability models. The results show a large and persistent gender gap: women are substantially more likely to report domestic and care work as the main reason for economic non-participation. Water constraints remain positively associated with this outcome even after introducing additional material household controls. The interaction between gender and water constraints is negative in non-linear specifications but changes sign in the linear model, so it should be treated as sensitive to functional form. These findings indicate that water infrastructure is a relevant, though not exclusive, material condition within the broader set of constraints affecting women’s economic autonomy.