WORK WITHOUT WAGES: OVERLOOKED LABOUR OF WOMEN IN HOMES

Picture by Rose Kibara

I always wondered what kind of alarm my mother sets because she is never late, never asleep when I wake up. Every morning she comes to wake me up for breakfast, and for years it was one of the most comforting parts of my day. I grew up seeing meals prepared on time, clothes folded, medicines remembered, and everything managed so naturally that I rarely ever questioned all the labour behind all this. Until one day I realised something deeply unsettling. She never took a day off.

Every morning before the world properly wakes up. Millions of women are already midway through their jobs, making breakfasts, packing lunchboxes, cleaning houses and ironing clothes. Yet after such an intensive cycle of labour, housewives are described as “not working”. This reveals a big flaw in our society that looks at a defined 9–5 as a job but refers to the 24 hour labour as being idle.

LABOUR IN THE DOMESTIC SPHERES

Cooking, cleaning, caregiving, emotional support are believed to be natural “feminine” responsibilities rather than actual work. According to India’s Time Use Survey, women spend nearly 5 hours daily on domestic work that is more than men. One thing society doesn’t understand is that economies can function only when homes are functioning yet the labour sustaining these homes remains undervalued.

LANGUAGE AS A SYSTEM OF HYPOCRISY

Language is moulded as a tool for oppression. A man returning home from the office is considered to be tired because he came back from “work”, while the women who work all day at home is asked questions like “what do you do at home all day”, “try finding a hobby”, “why are you even tired?” There is one thing for sure: if these responsibilities were done by hired homemakers, it would be the most expensive. But because this labour is quietly performed by the women of our houses, we normalized it instead of acknowledging it.

EMOTIONAL STRAIN

The burden of such invisible labour performed for years and years does not only take a physical toll but also exhausts them emotionally. We often notice how our mothers became aggressive at very trivial issues or became too emotional. Women are expected to remember events, care for the elderly, comfort children, and carry the burden of keeping a positive social environment leaving them no personal space. Sociologists describe it as “emotional labour” — work that consumes emotional energy. Working women experience “double shifts”, where they come home after working outside and have to do the unpaid labour inside their homes after their shift is over.

GENDER CONDITIONING AND EXPECTATIONS

The unconditional expectations from women and the persistent labour inside homes are closely tied to gender conditioning done since childhood. Mothers ask their daughters to help them set the the tables, whereas boys are expected to just sit and eat. From childhood, girls are taught to give care, and fulfill domestic responsibilities, whereas boys are asked to play, study hard and be ambitious. As a result, boys starts associating domestic work with girls. They look at cooking as being a feminine job rather than a basic need for survival. Even financially independent women, who are working equally long hours as their male counterparts, are expected to remain primarily responsible for domestic management. This shows how this issue is not merely economic but a deeply ingrained patriarchal concept that goes on for generations.

THE NEED FOR CHANGE

This invisible labour also affects the economic life of women. Carrying unequal domestic responsibilities give them less time for career growth, creativity, rest and ambition. The economic structures globally continue to benefit from such unpaid labour while refusing to recognize it as actual work. According to the UN, unpaid domestic work and labour contribute so much if monetized, yet it continues to exist outside formal structures.

The unpaid labour of women is not unpaid because it is not valuable, but because societies have benefitted a lot from ignoring it for centuries. True empowerment is not just celebrating women publicly while overly burdening them privately. Change requires not just appreciation but the redistribution of labour itself. Men and women should share domestic responsibilities. Men should be taught to help out the adults equally from childhood. Societies cannot celebrate progress while half of its population is sustaining homes, families and labour that remains undervalued, unpaid and ignored.