Removing the Creases in Housework Valuation

Context: The recent proposal for a monthly salary for Household work by women has revived the debate on the recognition of domestic work as work.  

Issues with the proposal: it indicates an employer-employee relationship, a relationship of subordination with the employer having disciplinary control over the employee.

Analyzing the issues of unpaid work by women in India:

• Gender divide:
  • While 159.85 million women stated household work as their primary occupation, a mere 5.79 men referred to it as their primary occupation. - Census 2011
  • ‘Time Use in India-2019 Report’ (National Statistical Office): On an average, Indian women spend 299 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services (men spend just 97 minutes.). Women also spend 134 minutes a day on unpaid caregiving services.
• Economic cost: Household work is not counted in calculating national income.
  • Economic value of services by women - $612.8 billion annually, as per report ‘Women’s Economic Contribution through their Unpaid Work: A Case Study of India’ (2009).
• Official neglect: consistent with this gendered valuation of family labour,
  • Census 2001 categorized those who perform household duties, (36 crore women) as non-workers and clubbed them together with beggars, prostitutes and prisoners. Arun Kumar Agrawal (2010)
  • In 2010, registration of the National Housewives Association as a trade union was denied as domestic work was treated as neither trade nor industry.
• Hierarchical structure of marital laws: Present matrimonial property laws give women their share only when the marital tie comes to an end.
• Separate spheres reasoning:
  • Market as a male sphere of selfish competitiveness, and home as a female sphere, a site of spiritual uplift. The moral elevation of the home was accompanied by the economic devaluation of the work.
  • This distinction reinforced the legal ordering of family life and justified a husband’s control.

Legislative response:

• The Married Women (Protection of Rights) Bill, 1994: provided that a married woman shall be entitled to have an equal share in the property of her husband and shall also be entitled to dispose of her share in the property.

Judicial response:

• Arun Kumar Agrawal v. National Insurance Company (2010): The Supreme Court while acknowledging the contribution of the housewives, said that her gratuitous services rendered with true love and affection could not be equated with services rendered by others.

International response: till 1851, no country had recognized a wife’s right in earnings of any sort.

• Third National Women’s Liberation Conference, in England in 1972: for the first time, explicitly demanded payment of wages for the household work.
• United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in 1991: recommended measurement domestic activities of women and their recognition in GDP.

Conclusion: The work women perform for the family should be valued equally with men’s work during the continuance of marriage, enhancing wives’ rights on the earnings and properties.