Context
Article talks about some interesting questions around women’s empowerment thrown by the recently released movie Dangal
Scene from the movie
A critical scene in the film is MahavirPhogat instructing his wife that the daughters will not do chulha-chowka (household work) any more, but will henceforth devote time to wrestling
A consequent question
Author rightly states that in the above case a pertinent question can be raised i.e. in the real world, outside the film, who is going to do the work that the girls are liberated from?
Q: Can we consider household work — cooking, cleaning, fetching water over long distances, caring for children, the sick and the elderly — or what is called as unpaid care work performed by women/girls as an optional service? And, which could be forsaken at will, without having an alternative in place?
Q: Can we have women’s liberation without questioning the fundamental division of labour that drives patriarchy i.e. it is primarily a women’s task to tend to home and care for the elderly while men go out to earn?
Q: Can we break this public/private division, by women competing in a man’s world as a man, by following the rules set by men, in a world made for men?
Q: Can we not break this man-woman dichotomy by making it irrelevant rather than by simply bringing a few women on board to the male side of the division of labour?
Unpaid care work: A neglected area
This unpaid labour is looked down upon in the world, and is not part of national accounting or Gross Domestic Product. But ironically, it is what sustains the economy.
Contribution
It is estimated that women perform 75% of the world’s unpaid care work
- India: In India, women perform 10 to 12 times the unpaid care work of men. Even in the West, women’s share is much higher
- A paper by Ferrant, Pesando and Nowacka put the unpaid care work at 63% of the Indian GDP, and 40% of the Swedish one
- Agriculture: Women contribute to agricultural work too. In the developing world, women constitute nearly half of the agricultural labour force, and 60% in Asia and Africa
- Despite this, women own less than 20% of the agricultural land of the world. Women and girls also constitute 60% of the world’s chronically hungry
- The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that if women farmers had the same resources as men, it would have led to 150 million fewer hungry people. Thus, the elimination of hunger and malnutrition are crucially dependent on women
Double burden
Authors state that even if a woman finds employment outside it does not ease her burden as now she is burdened with both household and paid work leading to a double burden
Limited access to paid work
It is because women cannot give up unpaid care work that their access to paid work is severely limited. Even when they find paid work, it is mostly low-paid, dangerous or temporary work
Women participation in sport
- Authors state that women participation in sports, especially in gender inequitable societies can lead to reversal of established gender norms. This effect is stronger if women enter male -dominated sports
- Female/athlete paradox: Even if women enter sports they are subjected to constant scrutiny wherein their bodies are measured to societal standards to what a female body must resemble. For eg: A female wrestler might have large shoulders, a broad chest but the society might see such female athletes having less feminine characteristics
Burdened as domestic helps
Even when some women break out of the private sphere and enter the public sphere, the unpaid care work falls upon lowly-paid women domestic help from the most marginalised backgrounds, and poor immigrant women in developed countries
- Large numbers of women, especially in the Third World — as mothers, wives, sisters and daughters — are unsung heroes, but who are systematically marginalised unless they bring home a medal or moolah, to prove they are of equal worth as men
Way forward
Authors state that women’s liberation has to be based on concrete material foundations. It is women’s unpaid care work, which makes work and sport outside the home possible
- Recognise unpaid care work: For real equality, it is imperative that women’s care work be given its due material recognition
- Reorienting gender norms: Men should shoulder responsibility of unpaid care work along with women so that they can secure paid employment in public sphere
- Poor labor force participation rates: Despite economic and educational growth, female participation in the labour force of India has fallen to 24% in 2011, from 31% in 2004. India is 11th from the bottom in the world in women’s labour-force participation rates
