An Article by Sanjukta Dasgupta

LABOUR OF LOVE: Housewives’ Unpaid Domestic Work

 

In 2012,  Krishna Tirath, Minister of State, Ministry of Women and Child Development, Central Govt of India suggestion that Parliament should consider the proposal of making it mandatory for husbands to pay housewives for domestic work raised quite a storm in conservative and tradition- bound Indian society.

 

 KrishnaTirath advocates that husbands must pay a portion of their salaries to their full-time housewives, for the domestic work done by them.  After all one cannot ignore the fact that housewives are not just married to their respective husbands but are tied in wedlock to the marital houses as well. In Bengali culture a just married young wife is often sensitized that her so called wayward manners that were so long a part of her life must be surrendered as she has now transformed into not just a wife but is now delegated the onerous task of behaving like a ‘barirbou”, a housewife, implying that she would have to re-invent herself as a desirable wife in her marital home.  This role invariably implies that the wife as a member of the marital home is expected to be obedient, dutiful, hard working and preferably will speak, of course deferentially, only when spoken to. The role of husbands in such situations is very complex, this can be sadistic, pathetic, helpless or violent, but that is a different subject and not germane to the issue to be discussed here.

 

 Economists cite both economic and social gain, if the house work done by married women becomes paid work, that is, ifit becomes mandatory for husbands to pay their wives for their 24x7 domestic work. Domestic work, performed by married women has been romanticized for centuries as unconditional, sacred labour of love. The more a woman performs in the domestic domain without claiming anything, is grateful for her sustenance and remains silent, accepting, uncomplaining, the more is she iconized as the ideal woman, the domestic Lakshmi, the mystical angel in the house.

 

The naysayers who extol the merits of the sacred domestic space and women’s excruciating labour of love,  feel that the state’s role is interventionist, violating the haloed space of family dynamics and some suggest that it is the State that should create more job opportunities for women, instead of coercing husbands to pay their wives. All this discourse however also suggests that the traditional binaries remain intact.  Women’s roles remain entrenched within the domestic space and men’s rolesare about performance in the public space, as a result, this stereotyping of gender roles consolidates the binaries even in the globalized 21st century. A more gender neutral approach can be suggested. If husbands opt for full time domestic work their wage earning wives can pay them for home management. This would ensure gender justice, a level playing field and gender equality within the patriarchal family system. This may be an exciting target to strive for, even if it takes a thousand years to succeed.

 

It is common knowledge that the celebrated British novelist Virginia Woolf had seriouslyupset the British phallocratic society by asking such questions as “why do men drink wine and women water” or “is the work of a mother, of a wife, of a daughter, worth nothing to the nation in solid cash” and had made the educated,  culturedmale British decision makers fume when she stated in her categorical one-liner, “Husband and wife are not only one flesh; they are one purse” ( TG 54). Woolf obviously was emphasizing the need for systemic transformation.

 

 We find that Woolf’s statements and rhetorical queries link women’s marginalization to patriarchy, poverty and in a more extended sense to race, location and culture. In two of her explosive non-fictional texts A Room of One’s  Own (1929) and Three Guineas( 1938)  often regarded as two powerful feminist manifestos of the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf underscored that women could be liberated only when  adult women were adequately educated and trained in professional skills. Such education would enable her to have an independent income thereby empowering her to have an identity and as a result she would be able to live her life on her own terms. All this is easier said than done, as we are aware of the domestic entrapment of women harnessed in a relentless environment of permission and control. So even if women are part of the work force and are able to earn their living, the salary cheque has often to be surrendered to the male family members such as husband , father or even uncle or brother depending on circumstances.

 

Economic, social and emotional dependence of adult women on male authority, have fortified patriarchal norms that vary from social conditioning, threats of ostracism to emotional blackmail that fracture women’s sense of self-esteem. The end result is that women who engage in remunerative work find that there is no relaxation in their responsibilities as care givers, cooks, nannies, basic educators of minor children, that is, chores that are integral to overallhome management and therefore  woman as wives and mothers, are seduced into accepting multi-tasking as their way of life. These roles of super wife and super mother are glorified with widely canvassed ideologies of the mythic Shakti, creating a mystique that narcotizes women and such social conditioning makes them accept the dual roles as wage earner in the public domain, and as unpaid labour within the domestic space that involves home management, kitchen work, bearing and rearing of children, care for elderly family members and attending to the needs of the helpless husbands.  Women’s compulsory roles in production(unpaid domestic labour) and reproduction(childbirth) creates a mesmeric mystique that blinkers women into acceptingtheir roles as unpaid labour.The Human Development Report of UNDP documents that while 67% of the world’s work is done by women only 10% of global income is earned by women and mere 1% of global property is owned by women. 

 

Interestingly, key research findings initiated by WSAF & Health Bridge titled, “Women’s Economic Contribution throughTheir Unpaid Work: The Case in India” (2009) include the following:

a. Woman typically work 16 hours per day on both paid and unpaid

labour;

b Most women have no leisure time;

c.Women bear the greatest responsibility for household chores,

including many tasks related to income generation;

d. Most women, even if they have a servant, do their own cooking;

e. Women generally assume full responsibility for tutoring and helping

children with school work; 

f.Rural women perform a wider variety of tasks than do urban women;

g.While both men and women recognize that women’s household

activities constitute important work, they fail to grasp the extent of its

economic value;

h. The value of unpaid household work performed by women throughout India is upwards of 612.8 billion

 

We have seen that the incisive text of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas apart from being an anti-war, anti-fascist text, is also a diatribe against gender injustice, oppression and exploitation of women, women’s unpaid domestic labour and romantic notions of feminine roles of women as care givers and glorified mothers. In India, the move to pass the Bill in Parliament this year, may have strange results, as women who challenge men in the public domain and complain about glass ceilings may be told to return to where they truly belong, the home,  and more so, now that they would be paid for house work.  Perhaps anticipating suchdistortions of the intended purpose, Virginia Woolf  had quoted the following from the Daily Telegraph, January 22, 1936, “…if men were doing the work that thousands of young women are now doing the men would be able to keep those same women in decent homes. Homes are the real places of the women…It is time the Government insisted upon employers giving work to more men, this enabling them to marry women they cannot now approach”. (TG 51).

 

This is the implied risk, women maybe advised to work at home and leave the job market for men as the woman’s world is her family, her husband, her children and her home. Besides, Woolf raises another pertinent question about distribution and utilization of the husband’s half-salary that may be legally and even spiritually surrendered to the wife. Woolf asks whether the wife will have similar freedom to use the money in any way she likes after meeting the common household utility bills, as her husband does. That is, can she spend the money on wine, cigars, clubs, sports, race course or would she be expected to be satisfied as she had secured boarding, lodging, clothes and petty pocket money?

 

 I will conclude by citing two more quotes from Three Guineaspublished in 1938 which probably addresses issues that will be debated in our Parliament in 2012. So Woolf refers to the paid work of archbishops, army captains, policemen and postmen and observes, “…but wives and mothers and daughters who work all day and every day, without whose work the State would collapse and fall to pieces, without whose work your sons, Sir, would cease to exist, are paid nothing whatever. Can it be possible?...” (TG 54).

 

Finally claiming that women’s work at home, as housewives should be remunerative work, Woolf however urges the necessity to consider whether wives will be given the freedom to spend the surplus money as freely as their husbands in hobbies and pastimes, or will she be called up at the end of each month to account for each coin spent, That is, she may be well asked,  has she spent the surplus money on family needs or did she indulge in private pleasures? The threats and demands of accountability and transparency may even make wives decline the generous offer of payment for what after all are unquestioned wifely duties, as tradition and societal norms had trained her into accepting as a matter of faith. As marriage plans are made, it would be considered a combustible question if a would be housewife asked what sort of daily domestic chores she was expected to do and the total time involved perday and the rates offered per job, whether she could expect work sharing at home, public holidays according to the calendar, earned leave, medical leave or leave encashment? After all Woolf succinctly sums up, “It stands to reason that if the wife has a spiritual right to half her husband’s income because her own work as his wife is unpaid, then she must have as much money to spend upon such causes as appeal to her as he has.”

 ( TG 55)

 

All this may make us wonder whether it’s a Hobson’s choice, as Woolf reasons. “marriage is a profession, because it is an unpaid profession, and because the spiritual share of half the husband’s salary is not, facts seem to show, an actual share.(TG 58).

 

Virginia Woolf wrote Three Guineas in 1938 addressing mainland Britain, India of course was a British colony then.  More than seventy years later in post-colonial India we are addressing similar issues, with an awareness of the sameness and difference that define developed and developing locations, with its specific socio-economic and cultural parameters. But are we ready? Wives as unpaid domestic workers are powerless in comparison to the paid domestic workers in the unorganized sector. In fact a newspaper survey recently revealed that many married women, both housewives and professional married women regarded their domestic maids as empowered, supportive and dependableDurgas. Wives as full time homemakers and married professional women declared that in the absence of the support of their paid domestic workers they would find it very difficult to pursue their preferred chores and professions, even for a single day. A simple solution therefore is not easy when the culturally sensitive issues are married women’s unpaid work at home and the need to make husbands pay their wives for domestic work.