GENDER BASED DIVISION OF LABOUR IN FAMILY

Gender-based division of labour in the family

In a household or a family, men and women both work. But they do not do the work as they like. They do the work they are allotted to do on the basis of their gender. This sex-based allotment of work is called gender division of labour. Gender division of labour is based neither on capacity nor on rationality, but on age old practices and belief systems. When we claim that our society has advanced, that women have occupied several public spaces, that they are visible in almost all important fields like Board Rooms, space missions, and that they have emerged as political leaders in this country at village and the national levels (Palli to Parliament), let us ask ourselves if the gender division of labour in the family has been affected by these success stories?

In real life, the number of women joining the employment market has gone up. A large number of women have joined the workforce. But it has not relieved them from domestic work. They are now "doubly burdened". The situation of women doing white collar jobs is different from that of women who earn their daily wage. Millions of women struggle to perform their domestic chores while doing work outside home. This places a heavy burden on them.

Women's work at home is invisible. Shockingly, only paid or remunerated activities are defined as work. A woman who does the bulk of the work in the family is never paid. So, her contributions are never considered as work. Her economic contributions to the maintenance and development of the family and its members go unrecognised. Care has long been considered to be the 'natural' responsibility of women. Women's work within families is variously known as "domestic work", "reproductive labour", "carework" and "emotional labour". These works remain invisible, are under-recognized, undervalued and unremunerated. It is not taken into account in the National GDP Account or the census enumeration of work.

Thus, there are many areas of human activity which are excluded from economic measurement. The unpaid services include household maintenance, subsistence agriculture, voluntary work, family sustenance activities and reproductive work. All these are undertaken by women. A simple example given below can explain the difference between visible and invisible work:

The teacher here can also cite the example of recognized productive and unrecognized productive work of "pickle making". All over India, women at home make different kinds of pickle, which is a side dish and for some it becomes a principal dish. When this pickle is made by women as part of a cottage industry or S.H.G. endeavor and sold in the market, it acquires an economic value. Here the work becomes paid work. On the other hand, the pickle made by womenfolk for home consumption becomes a regular consumption item without monetary value and is unpaid, unrecognized and invisible.

As per the U.N. Report, 2020

On an average day, women globally spend about three times more hours on unpaid domestic and care work than men. This includes cooking, cleaning, fetching water and firewood and other non-market essential daily tasks within households. These works go unpaid.