CONTEXT  Recently veteran actor Kamal Haasan and his Makkal Needhi Maiam party promised salaries for housewives as a part of the party’s election manifesto. This  has revived the debate on the recognition of domestic work as work.

BURDEN ON THE WOMEN COMPARED TO THE MEN

• According to the 2011 Census, while 159.85 million women stated household work as their main occupation, a mere 5.79 men referred to it as their main occupation.
• ‘Time Use in India­2019 Report’ of the National Statistical Office says that on an average, while Indian women spend 299 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services for household members, men spend just 97 minutes. Women spend 134 minutes in a day on unpaid caregiving services for household members.
• A French government’s Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress in 2009 that studied the situation in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Finland and the U.S. drew similar conclusions.
• A report entitled ‘Women’s Economic Contribution through their Unpaid Work: A Case Study of India’ (2009) had estimated the economic value of services by women to be to the tune of a whopping $ 612.8 billion annually.
• Globally, women perform 76.2% of total hours of unpaid care work, more than three times as much as men.
• 92% Indian women take part in unpaid domestic work; only 27% men do so.

JUDICIAL RESPONSES BY SUPREME COURT ON THIS REGARD

• In Kirti and Another v. Oriental Insurance Company (2021) casse, Justice Ramana has not only listed the various activities women undertake but also referred to British economist Arthur Cecil Pigou who had lamented that the household work by wives is not taken into consideration in calculating national income.
• In Arun Kumar Agrawal v. National Insurance Company (2010) case, the Supreme Court acknowledged the contribution of the housewives and also observed that it cannot be computed in terms of money. Her gratuitous services rendered with true love and affection cannot be equated with services rendered by others.
• Justice A.K. Ganguly in Arun Kumar Agrawal (2010) case, referred to Census 2001 that is carried out under an Act of Parliament and had categorized those who perform household duties, i.e. about 36 crore women in India, as non-workers and clubbed them together with beggars, prostitutes and prisoners (who are not engaged in economically unproductive work).

HISTORY OF THIS SKEWED BURDEN OF LABOR

• For centuries, the English common law of marital status was starkly hierarchical.
• Forget the recognition of a homemaker’s work as work; she had no right even in respect of her work outside home.
• Till 1851, no country had recognised a wife’s right in earnings of any sort. If a housewife worked for pay in or out of the home, it was her husband’s prerogative to collect her wages.
• By the middle of the 19th century, some American States started reforming the common law of marital status by enacting the “Married Women’s Property Acts”. Some of these statutes exempted the wives’ real property from their husband’s debts.
• By 1850, the era of “earning statutes” started which granted wives property rights in earnings from their “separate” or “personal” labour.
• But the Census measures of the economy that appeared in the aftermath of the American Civil War characterised household work as “unproductive”, and excluded women engaged in income producing work in the household from the count of “gainfully employed”.
• The Indian Census also seems to refer to this regressive precedent.

REASON BEHIND THIS BIASED DIVISION OF LABOR

• For centuries home and market were considered as two distinct spheres, such that market was a male sphere of selfish competitiveness, while the home was celebrated as a female sphere.
• The tendency of a “separate spheres” reasoning was thus to reinforce the legal ordering of family life and justify a husband’s control of family assets.
• Subsequently, women demanded a right to own themselves, their earnings, their genius. They finally achieved success when the equal rights of wives in the matrimonial property were recognised.
• The Third National Women’s Liberation conference, in England in 1972, for the first time, explicitly demanded payment of wages for the household work.

SITUATION IN INDIA  

• The debate on joint property rights of married women is not new though we still do not have joint matrimonial property law.
• Veena Verma did introduce a private member Bill in 1994 entitled The Married Women (Protection of Rights) Bill, 1994. The Bill provided that a married woman shall be entitled to have an equal share in the property of her husband from the date of her marriage and shall also be entitled to dispose of her share in the property by way of sale, gift, mortgage, will or in any other manner whatsoever.
• But in 2010, even registration of the National Housewives Association as a trade union was denied as domestic work was treated as neither trade nor industry.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?

• It should understand that the term ‘salary’ as monthly payment is indeed problematic as it indicates an employer employee relationship, i.e., a relationship of subordination with the employer having disciplinary control over the employee.
• Wives do not deserve a master servant relationship. Hence, there is the need for measurement and quantification of unremunerated domestic activities of women and their recognition in GDP, as recommended by The United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in 1991, so that the de facto economic contribution of women is highlighted.
• Matrimonial property laws do give women their share but only when the marital tie comes to an end. Hence, the time has come to insist that the work women perform for the family should be valued equally with men’s work during the continuance of marriage.
• There is a need for women to be little assertive, so that prenuptial marriage agreements can easily solve this problem with the insertion of the clause on wives’ right in husband’s earnings and properties being included in such agreements.

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/removing-the-creases-in-housework-valuation/article33620752.ece