This article is written by Harsh Gupta pursuing BA.LLB from School of law, HILSR, Jamia Hamdard. This is an exhaustive article which deals with various facets of the concept of gender division of labour at home and the implications of lockdown.
Introduction
Gender division of labour at any place has always been a debatable topic in every sphere of life for decades. If we go by the expression “Gender Division of labour” then it means the role of work that has been assigned to people based on their gender. For example- there is a misconception as to how women are portrayed in society as, we necessarily get the notion(misconception) about women that she is caring, full of emotions, soft-spoken, caretaker, housekeeper, mother, kind, weak and also we all know these services are unpaid so when we calculate GDP of a country, we don't include these services. While on the other hand men are perceived and portrayed as emotionless, strong, leader, bread-winner, courageous, powerful. Gender division primarily originates because of stereotypical roles assigned to men & women and age-old perceptions. You may have often heard that- women from honoured families always veils their head and face whenever they go outside! So, even if a woman wants to go out and do a job, society never permits them, otherwise, they will be categorized or labelled as ‘bad’ and also “family honour” is another aspect a woman needs to take care of while performing any activity under her capacity. In this piece of article, the author discusses the concept of gender division of labour at home and also deals with the changes it went through during the pandemic.
Role of perception in gender inequality
Gender inequality refers to inequality of opportunity, health, education, economic and political space between men and women. Perception plays a key role in increasing the gap of gender inequality in many ways. Cultural and societal norms are patriarchal as they were created by men only to subjugate the role and status of women as it promotes subordination of women in a form of social strata. It has been years where sons have been preferred over girls and the right of inheritance and succession has been denied for long.
In extreme cases, the discrimination takes the form of honour killings where families kill daughters or daughters-in-law who fail to conform to gender expectations about marriage and sexuality. A woman is supposed to follow certain expected and stereotypical gender norms and if she has not been able to follow those norms, society starts shaming followed by humiliation that impacts her both mentally and physically.
Is unpaid work still a women’s job
First of all, the utmost need is to recognise the work of women as ‘job’ because debate starts the moment people recognise work as a job, as a job necessarily includes service and it can be paid service or unpaid service. Now the situation and status of women have been changed, it’s no longer restricted to the ‘purdah system’ as women go outside their premises, do their jobs and contribute to the family income but to generalise this statement is wrong. We have failed to recognise the work of a housewife as a paid job over the years and they have always been poor, uneducated, exploited, disregarded for their services. The prime example of the dependency of women on husbands can be illustrated by the statement when the parents of the bride ask the bridegroom- “I have brought up my daughter very well with great care, do not let her lack of anything, always keep her happy”! So here bride’s parents expect a husband to take care of her daughter’s happiness instead they never say to her daughter to take care of the husband’s happiness, it’s because people asks usually- “what job does the boy do, does he do a government job?” Nobody asks these questions to women as for them till the moment a girl can be a housewife, the job gets done. People expect only husbands to earn so a lot has to do with people's expectations and perceptions.
The burden of work on women at home
The burden of work got bulky with rising in coronavirus, unpaid work at home includes everything we can imagine within the premises of home such as washing utensils and clothes, drying and pressing clothes, cooking every time from 9 AM to 9 PM as taste matters a lot for Indians, especially for men as they cannot compromise on taste, followed by child care, pampering and socialisation. All tasks are daunting, time-taking, tiring, require a lot of physical and mental labour and that too goes unrecognised and unpaid which further leaves no time for personal use and maintenance and that’s why women become more prone to diseases. A woman's job at home is never-ending in comparison to a job at a workplace where a person can decide to not go to the office. This unevenness sabotages women’s value in the family because as earlier stated women’s unpaid work goes uncounted as it does not generate revenue. Women who work in a paid job are also burdened with household work, so in the long run, it becomes difficult to maintain congruence with men in terms of promotion in job and career-making. It does not matter the amount of salary a woman gets paid, so regardless of women’s levels of income the burden of household work is always with women.
Case law
In this case, applications were invited for employment to apply for permanent post of safety officer for males only, petitioner filed the case in Kerala High Court on the basis of discrimination and it was violative of Article 14 which deals with equality before law, Article 15 which deals with prohibition of discrimination and Article 16 which deals with equality of opportunity in public employment. However the respondent relied on section 66(1)(b) of Indian Factory Act,1948 which mentions that women will not be required or permitted to work after 7 PM to 6 AM. The court contended that provision provided under section 66(1)(b) of Indian Factories Act,1948 safeguarded women from any form of exploitation at workplace but the court also extended that said provision was not directive to women but for benefit of women, so it must be exercised as a welfare provision and it should not be used as an alternative to deny engagement of women who does not need such protection anymore. This judgment was a significant step towards reducing gender division of labour and women empowerment.
Result of overburden of unpaid work on women before lockdown
A Time Use Survey’(TUS) report was published in the year 2020 by the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation to measure the participation of men and women in unpaid and paid work in India and the survey it was found that women in India do more work in comparison to men by an hour, the report also outcasted the extreme time poverty when it comes to paid work participation. As per data collection, it was found that women in India spend almost 80% of their working hours on unpaid labour, while on the other hand men spend 80% of their working hours in paid labour. As per data by National Statistical Office, it was found that on average women spend 299 minutes on unpaid work which is almost equal to 5 hours in a day, while men spend only 97 minutes per day. The most obvious reason and backlash for overburdening of unpaid work on women is the lack of participation in paid work. As earlier stated that Indian women’s involvement in paid employment is much lower than their male counterparts and to substantiate this argument we have data by the National Statistical Office which shows that only 22% of the age group 15-60 women are engaged in paid work in juxtaposition to 70% men of the same age-group.
Changing work ethics in lockdown
During the second wave of the pandemic, things became stable in comparison to the first wave where no one had any idea regarding the effects of the pandemic as there was also wrong information circulated over social media which caused tragedy to the human life. As far as dynamics of work ethics is concerned, everything is digital nowadays, people are working from home. If we deal with pros of working from home, there are many which include- proper care and time to family and children, people spend more quality time together with one another, it reduces travel time to workplace, people can offer the multi-task to different companies by dividing and allocating their time for different tasks. At the same time it’s is very important to deal with the cons- as per data, the cases of domestic violence had increased by 60% during the lockdown as more than 95% of women were victims, since courts were not functioning and women in rural areas are not aware of the redressal mechanism and laws as most of them are illiterate and poor and everything was at standstill, they suffered the most with an increase in work at home, overburden of work lead to health illness. Online education was not able to substantiate the quality education, practical learning and exposure which offline mechanisms provide but it was capable enough to substantiate the quantity of education in terms of syllabus completion. Work from home may not work in the long run as people do not get the right kind of environment at home which causes deterioration in the quality of work.
Negative change during lockdown- salt on the plight of women
Pandemic added more to the injury of deteriorated conditions of women where lacks of people lost their job, many died because of hunger and no access of food, migrant workers died midway and also as per the study conducted by Ashwani Deshpande, four out of ten working women lost their job due to countrywide lockdown as a result, it increased responsibility on women to take care of family members. As per the study conducted by Time Use Survey, it was carved out that women did three times more childcare in juxtapose to men and also with school, colleges, Anganwadi’s closed, women’s unpaid work increased. A study has shown that 34% of women who earn more than 1,00,000 INR spend 25 hours per week on average while performing household work, on the other hand only 7% of men invest the same amount of time as women. Kindred specimens have been witnessed for women who earn in between the slab of 50,000-1,00,000 INR per month, study shows that 25% of women spent 22-28 hours per week on unpaid domestic work, compared to 0% of men during the pandemic.
Couples are challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic including lockdowns that force working parents to coordinate an increase in both paid and unpaid labour. As families endured a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, gender differences in the division and impact of domestic and paid labour were studied through a pre-registered experiment using previous mixed-gender studies with young children. The lockdown provided couples with opportunities to better share household responsibilities, but women handled more parenting and housework, whereas men were mostly engaged in paid work and personal affairs. While couple members agreed the balance of labour was unfair to women, this did not forestall the detrimental impact of the increased domestic burden on women. Housekeeping and parenting responsibilities unfairly assigned to women and having less personal time on their own, resulted in a decrease in relationship satisfaction and problems in relationships. Women's relationships were adversely affected by inequalities in domestic labour regardless of their caregiver status or employment status. As a result of these findings, we should be concerned that COVID-19 may have to pose greater risks to women, including the potential to worsen gender equality and strain women's health and wellbeing. The study findings suggest men who were primary caregivers or were not working full-time also had worse relationship outcomes when they shared more domestic responsibilities. It was, therefore, important to create an equitable division of labour in the home to protect the health and wellbeing of women (and men) who are coping with the exacerbated stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns.
Conclusion
Gender division of labour at home changed during lockdown very minutely not drastically and also as earlier discussed women were more prone to discrimination, harassment and domestic violence during the lockdown. Women were overburdened with work of office at home and household work which led to a severe increase in deterioration in health conditions of women and also at that point of time even doctors were not available and hospitals were not giving any sort of entry to patients except corona cases. India should adopt a policy and set the parameters so that women's unpaid work will get paid and recognised and women will be in parity with men in all spheres of life. In the case of Secretary, Ministry of Defense v. Babita Puniya, it was held that the out-and-out debarring of women from all others besides staff assignments are flimsy. If the Army has eloquent reasons for debarring women from a definite touchstone or command appointment, it may provide them to the pertinent authorities and if necessary, to future courts. The blanket non-pondering of women for criteria or command appointments absent an individuated justification by the Army cannot be sustained in law. It shows courts are interpreting laws with a broader view taking into account women’s interests and rights.
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