Staying the public eye is an art; it is one that Kangana Ranaut appears to have mastered. She has been in the news recently for a range of reasons other than movies: using derogatory terms for female colleagues a Twitter spat with Diljit Dosanjh, complaining about harassment from the BMC, holding forth on politics and so on. She has now once again inserted herself successfully into headlines by locking horns with actor-politician Kamal Haasan and Shashi Tharoor on a matter about unpaid domestic labour.
Kamal Haasan recently mooted the idea of paying homemakers for work that they routinely do in the home. This would give recognition to the work that homemakers; typically women do each day and also give dignity to that work by monetising it. More recently, Shashi Tharoor endorsed this view. However, Kangana Ranaut disagreed. She said ‘we don’t need salary’ for the work women routinely do and are never remunerated for. According to her, this view reduced the relationship of a homemaker with their family to commercial terms.
In my humble view, Ranaut is wrong for so many reasons – where do I even begin? Firstly, Ranaut presumes to speak for all the voiceless, powerless women who work in their homes: cleaning, cooking, caring, and nursing every day, without break. Ranaut is a rich woman by any standards – she has the kind of economic independence and privilege that very few other women in India could dream of. It is also quite unlikely that she engages in the kind of daily labour that she believes homemakers ought not to be paid for. She is unattached and therefore required to fulfill no demands of husband and in laws or meet social expectations of caregiving.
If crores of poor and powerless women, engaged in daily unpaid drudgery were given the offer of remuneration they would likely have a very different reply from that of Ranaut. There were many on Twitter who felt that Ranaut was no one to opine on a topic such as this. The fact is that most women still battle social expectations, unequal pay, gender bias and just rank misogyny every day. There is still a lot of injustice sought to be perpetuated under the guise of tradition and/or biological imperatives. Women such as Ranaut are very far removed from the reality of most Indian women.
According to an IndiaSpend report, it is precisely this unpaid work that women do inside the home that keeps them poor and unequal. Where Indian women spend about 352 minutes a day on domestic work, men spend just 52 minutes on this. Women spend 577% more time on housework than do men. This is seen as the homemaker’s duty; her labour of love. If she makes sacrifices of her time and effort, well that is just the way things are supposed to be, says society.
However, we need to recognise the fact that the work women do in the home is work like any other: physically taxing, time-consuming work that demands effort, planning and management. When one performs this work outside the home, it is paid for. So why should not work done within the home be paid work as well - even if it is done for one's own family?
If there is domestic or caregiving work to be done in the home, there is usually no question about who will do it --- the woman of the house will do it. Women in poor households have zero support from outside or within the home and have few if any mechanised aids to help. Many still need to fetch water for daily household needs. For some, it may take between 17 and 19 hours to complete all the tasks; leaving those women not only exhausted but actually sleep-deprived.
This domestic burden falls disproportionately upon women. It prevents women from working outside the home, pursuing higher education and looking after their own health. So in fact, these domestic ‘duties’ prevent women from earning money and gaining at least a modicum of financial independence or autonomy in life. In other words, it prevents women from trying to better their lot in life or gain a more equal footing with men. It perpetuates an unequal family equation where the earner of the family - usually the man - has a disproportionate amount of economic power and decision making authority.
The report surveyed women and asked them about the situation that demands so much of their time and effort daily. 64% said they had no choice in the matter. The report also speaks of something called ‘time poverty’ among women; where they spend far less time on leisure or at rest than do men. The unending household tasks rob women of agency and economic power. This reduces their decision-making powers in the household and hampers their mobility.
Cooking, cleaning, caregiving, nursing (most often not of the woman's own parents but her in-laws) needs to be viewed as important, productive, valuable work. Is it not time that this effort was recognised and commensurately rewarded? If the state assured a certain minimum wage to homemakers (yes, including those rare male homemakers) would that not be empowering? Would that not give homemakers a few more choices in life; their daily efforts a modicum of dignity?
People like Ranaut need to stop romanticising the drudgery women undergo each day as some kind of willing and joyous labour of love. It would be nice if all women were as privileged and empowered as Ranaut. Unfortunately the very opposite is true for most Indian women.
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