The idea of women empowerment and equality is one of the foundational pillars of our constitutional ideals. It has been witnessed that the Labour Force Participation Rate in females had reduced to 23.3% in 2017-18. While this in itself remains a major area of concern, the topic for the article’s consideration goes a step further. The bifurcation of the spheres of work between genders, with the unpaid care work being considered the domain for women, has adversely affected their development and progress and has undermined their contribution to the economy. As we move ahead, we would analyze the topic in further depth, exploring the idea of recognizing unpaid work.
As per a report by the International Labor Organization in 2018, women perform 76.2% of total hours of unpaid care work (three times more than that of men). With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and lack of services by domestic workers, the burden of household work has fallen upon women at the expense of their mental health. It has been further realized that the time spent on the care-work has grown for both genders, but the growth has been higher for women particularly. This has led to an enormous burden for working women who now have to fulfill their job obligations and perform tiresome household chores.
The term unpaid work includes non-remunerated work to sustain the well-being and maintenance of other individuals-care work, i.e., looking after children, elderly, disabled, etc., and activities like cooking and cleaning. Needless to say that women perform most of these activities in our society due to patriarchal conditioning and gender stereotypes. These activities, being time-consuming, leave little to no time for women to pursue other interests and tasks, thereby increasing the opportunity costs associated with those activities. It also keeps them from pursuing higher education and improving their skills. This further makes them incapable of participating in paid work. These limitations have culminated in India’s female labor force participation rate being among the lowest in the world. All of this is detrimental to women’s upliftment.
Article 14 and Article 21 of the Indian Constitution guarantee equality and the right to live with dignity. However, Indian women involved in household work are not treated equally to men, and their work is considered inferior to men’s paid work even today. As a result, the idea of recognizing and monetizing unpaid household work becomes paramount.
We see that the work done at home is disregarded by economists while calculating GDP as it doesn’t generate products and services and can be difficult to estimate in monetary terms. There is a great need to account for this unpaid work in the GDP as it impacts human capital formation. Not counting it further internalizes the notion that this work, which women largely perform, is insignificant and menial. Counting it would make the contribution of these unpaid ‘home makers’ visible, making women independent and self-reliant. It would further help in controlling domestic violence as women won’t be financially dependent on men. Recognition of household work would induce a sense of confidence and would bring about empowerment and equality.
However, at the same time, we know that there are challenges in monetizing unpaid work. It is difficult to measure the quality and quantity of unpaid work. Paying for household work might create an employee-employer relationship that would further emphasize women's obligation to perform the daily chores. It might lead to formalizing the patriarchal Indian family by stigmatizing household tasks as women’s work. So the question arises, what should be done?
The answer isn’t that simple. Our main aim should be to recognize as well as redistribute household work. We should stop taking these ‘free care services’ for granted and aim to break the gender stereotypes associated with it by redistributing the work between men and women equally. This will also buy some time for women to pursue their hobbies and ambitions. Its implementation is possible through timely surveys on all human activities, strengthening social infrastructure like care, health (childcare centers, care homes for elderly), spreading awareness through education, and bringing about behavioral change to encourage male involvement in unpaid work. Considering the above, we see that the time has come to overturn gender norms, give due respect to household work, and consider it not just women’s responsibility.
By Jaiyati Dwivedi
Jaiyati is a second-year student of Economics at Lady Shri Ram College for Women. Her areas of interest include tracking current economic developments with a focus on macroeconomic issues. She is a member of the Economics vertical of GAEE LSR.
