Written by Shambhavi Choudhary
Unpaid care work is so normalised that it often goes unrecognised. It involves daily chores such as cleaning, cooking, tending to the material, educational and emotional needs of other family members and other domestic duties. This work, which is essential to the well-being of other family members is usually done by a woman, most likely a mother. It is also important for the smooth functioning of the country’s economy where this unpaid care work accounts for nearly 10 to 39 per cent of a country’s GDP, according to a 2022 estimate by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Further, according to a 2023 State Bank of India report, care work alone accounts for 7.5 per cent of India’s GDP. Meanwhile, the economic implication of devaluing care work is overlooked.
The celebration of Mother’s Day ignores the multiplicity of identities that women hold. It only highlights women in the singular role of mothers or caregivers. Moreover, despite discussions on gender inequality and gaps in gender roles, women’s labour remains unrecognised and unpaid.
Women’s participation in the formal labour force has been less than that of men but that does not mean that women don’t work as much as men. According to a study conducted in 2023 by an academic at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, women spend 7.2 hours a day on unpaid domestic labour whereas men spend 2.8 hours. The study adds that even women who are wage-earners spend twice the amount of time on domestic work as compared to wage-earning men. This reaffirms stereotypical gender patterns that maintain that a woman’s primary job is to be a caregiver, irrespective of her employment status. In her book, relying on thorough research, The Second Shift, Arlie Russell Hochschild found that women essentially worked two shifts a day, the first shift at their place of employment and the second shift at home after work.
As per the World Inequality Report 2022, only one-third of the global labour income is earned by women. The report highlights the burden of unpaid care work on women which restricts them and threatens their position in the labour market. It also discusses the pay gap between men and women, which is due to career breaks arising from marriage or family planning. The “motherhood penalty” is a sociological term that essentially speaks to the disadvantages women face in pay, benefits and measure of competence when compared to women without children. According to PwC’s 2023 Women in Work Index, the average pay gap between men and women in terms of median hourly earnings is 14 per cent, which has only narrowed down by 2.5 per cent since 2011. Oxfam India’s 2019 household care survey found that one in three family respondents thought it was justified to beat a wife up for not caring properly for a child or the elderly.
The implications of the burden of unpaid labour are economic as well as social. It leads to reduced income equality and earning potential for women. They also have lesser opportunities to learn new skills, receive an education, socialise or be at leisure. Instead, there is a greater possibility of reinstituting the gendered division of labour, reinforcing the intergenerational cycle of unpaid work for women and girls. The position of women is even worse at lower levels of the social hierarchy. The intersectionality of caste and gender results in varied experiences. Women coming from upper-caste backgrounds have better opportunities in terms of higher education, which places them in a slightly more advantageous position in comparison to women from Dalit communities.
A macroeconomic policy interference, therefore, is needed to enable families to recognise invisible labour. There is a need to reduce and redistribute unpaid labour equally among all members of the family so as to allow women more bargaining power for their economic rights. Global consulting firm McKinsey & Company’s 2018 report highlights that working on gender parity in India will have a larger impact than any other country, with potential benefits of $700 billion in GDP by 2025. This can only be achieved by expanding the labour force by 10 per cent and increasing the paid hours of work for women. The Economic Survey 2022-2023 has suggested incorporating unpaid work as productive arguing that it is an expenditure-saving job that contributes to the standard of living.
The data mentioned above clearly shows that women do the lion’s share of work that is both unpaid and thankless. This Mother’s Day, it’s time we recognise the work done by women and bring about a change in societal attitudes. We need to make a collective effort to both understand and rethink gender disparity and do away with this system that neglects the rights of women.
The writer is a PhD scholar in sociology and Director of Gyan Niketan Girls School
