Context: Women everywhere carry a disproportionately higher burden of unpaid work, namely, unpaid domestic services as well as unpaid care of children, the old and the disabled for their respective households.

• Therefore, in order to adhere to the principle of gender equality and justice, it is imperative to recognize this unpaid work and make provisions to rectify this problem.

Linkages between unpaid work and the economy

GDP contribution: Unpaid work is a privately produced public good which is critical for the sustenance of the mainstream economy. The household produces goods and services for its members.

• GDP is a measure of the total production and consumption of the economy, it has to incorporate this work by accepting the household as a sector of the economy.

Unpaid work subsidises the private sector by providing it a generation of workers (human capital) and takes care of wear and tear of labour who are family members. 

• Saves capital: The private sector would have paid much higher wages and earned lower profits in the absence of unpaid work. 

Unpaid work subsidises the government by taking care of the old, sick and the disabled. 

• The state would have spent huge amounts in the absence of unpaid work. 

Restricting Opportunities: The invisible labor that a woman puts into household work is a 24-hour job without remuneration, promotions, or retirement benefits. Further, it restricts opportunities for women in the economy and in life.

• It is due to this female labor force participation rate in India is around 25%.

Challenges in Compensating Unpaid Work

• Implementation Issue: The Economic Survey 2019 recognizes this unpaid work, is a positive development. However, its implementation may create problems such as the affordability of the government and calculation of the amounts.
• Endorsing Norm of Women’s Work: Paying monetary benefits carries with it the possible danger of formally endorsing the social norm that domestic and care work is ‘women’s work’, for which they are being paid.
• Master-Servant Relationship: The term salary, wage, or compensation is indeed problematic as it indicates an employer-employee relationship, i.e., a relationship of subordination with the employer having disciplinary control over the employee.

Suggestion

Public policy should aim at closing the huge gender gap in unpaid domestic and care work through ‘recognition, reduction, and redistribution.
Recognition: Paying a wage is a formal recognition of the fact that unpaid domestic and care work is no less important than paid market work, as the latter is parasitic on the former.

• What governments could do is recognize this unpaid work in the national database by a sound time-use survey and use the data in national policies.

Reduction: Women’s burden of unpaid work can be reduced by:

• Improving technology (e.g. better fuel for cooking),
• Better infrastructure (e.g. water at the doorstep),
• Shifting some unpaid work to the mainstream economy (e.g. childcare, care of the disabled, and care of the chronically sick),
• Making basic services (e.g. health and transportation) accessible to women.

Redistribution: Policy measures should also envisage redistributing the work between men and women by providing different incentives and disincentives to men (e.g. mandatory training of men in housework, childcare, etc.) and financial incentives for sharing housework.