“And I’ve always struggled with this, you know, ki (that) how do we even monetize something as work at home, which actually is what makes the country’s economy run, right? Because if one day my mother, who’s a homemaker, decides that she’s not going to cook, she’s not going to clean, my father won’t be able to go to the office, right? And since we’ve monetized only one kind of work, how do we even grapple with all these complex questions?”
— Sara Sethia reflecting on the gendered politics of unpaid care work, in this episode of the Nurturing Radical Kindness podcast.
Work is an indisputably crucial aspect of our lives. Our working hours determine our mood, our health and even our leisure. To get a good job, that is, to be “well-settled,” seems to be a goal passed down from generation to generation. Doctors, engineers and lawyers have the social sanction, while artists, sociologists and historians not so much. The nature of our work and the way society treats it can have major ramifications on our lives, but how and in what ways? Why are some forms of work paid, and others not? Is household labour work? Is there ‘good’ work and ‘bad’ work? How do caste, gender and class intersect with advocacy for labour rights? In this episode, co-hosts Vandita Morarka and Sanchi Patel reflect on the political economy of labour, and tackle these questions, and many more, along with Sara Sethia, a growth and development economist.
Content Warning: This conversation includes accounts of caste-based discrimination.
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Love to read or want to revisit your favourite bits? Dive into the full transcript below!
Vandita
Hi everyone, welcome back to the third episode of Nurturing Radical Kindness, a podcast where we explore radical kindness as a pathway to achieving social justice. My name is Vandita and my pronouns are she and her.
Sanchi
And I’m Sanchi. My pronouns are she/her and thank you for tuning in to another episode with us.
We’ve been enjoying having these conversations on radical kindness with all of you so much, and yes, looking forward to learning lots more.
Vandita
Definitely, Sanchi. And we’re so excited for today’s conversation. We’ll be talking about the politics of labour and we’ll be exploring a little bit of what even is seen as work, what isn’t seen as work, and how our ideas of morality and right and wrong intersect with how we see work and how we assign value to work and to the people behind that. Before we start off for today, I would like to give a big shout out to the people behind the scenes. We have Kuhoo and Ashita, who’ve been working on the content that we’ve been hearing great feedback for. And we have Suchanda, who’s been producing the podcast. Thank you so much everyone for the work that you did.
Sanchi
Yes, big, big thanks to everyone and I think this is a very important conversation that we’re having today, Vandita. So, allow me to start right off with a question to you. And I want to ask you here, where do you exactly think our current understanding of work really comes from?
Vandita
Thanks for the question, Sanchi. I feel like understanding just what work means is something that I struggled a lot with because it didn’t necessarily make as much obvious sense to me as it seemed to make to everybody. And I think the more I see work around me, I think it’s very much rooted in a capitalist idea of production. So I think work often becomes about, ‘OK, so you did something, but as a result of that, how much did you produce? Is there something tangibly that can either be sold off or that has created additional financial value in some way?’ And I think tying in our understanding of work with the whole financial aspect of production has also limited our imagination of what work is. I think that’s also led to so many other things, right? Work has become so inherently interlinked with what we believe about ourselves. The values of good and bad we assign to ourselves because so much of people’s self-esteem in a capitalist system comes from what we believe work assigns value. That means that we think we’re good or bad based on the values we assign to the work that we do. What about you, Sanchi?
Sanchi
That makes so much sense, Vandita. And to be honest, like you said, we do see this all around us, right? Work is something that can produce additional monetary benefit to us, and since we have grown up seeing certain types of work not being valued as much around us. I think humare khudh ke dimaag mein bhi vahi cheeze internalise ho gayi hain, (this is internalised in our minds also) right? And how domestic work is socially treated, clearly points to this. And I think Vandita, another important thing here is that work output is one thing that is definitely, definitely influenced by capitalism. But another thing that comes into play about the perception we hold towards any work or any occupation is also affected by who is doing it right, vo kaam kaun kar raha hai (who is doing the work) will also decide how we perceive it. And this is where I think what we do intersects with the identities we occupy like yaha pe (here) our caste, our gender identity, our sexual orientation, ethnicity and so many other axes that we hold intersect with what we do. Jaise ki (like), there’s so much caste typing of jobs that happens where in our systems use this to really continuously exploit certain caste groups hain na (right)? And if we talk about gender, I think how this comes into play is very obvious because hum sab ne ye dekha hai ki (we have all seen that) some occupations are considered inherently feminine, while others are taken to be more masculine and phir (then) obviously, by default, jo (those) feminine occupations hai, they come to be valued lesser, right? Matlab humari binary understandings itni engrained hai humare dimaag me ki things like babysitting, nursing or secretarial positions vagera jo ye sab cheeze hai (our binary understandings are so engrained in our minds that things like babysitting, nursing, secretarial positions), very easily we label them less important because we associate them with conventionally feminine traits. And just an instance from pop culture comes into mind here wherein there’s this scene from Friends where Rachel hires a “male” nanny for Emma, and Ross has a very hard time accepting and keeps asking the nanny, ‘So, you’re just like a guy who’s a nanny?’ I mean, how ridiculous is it that we value some work less because a particular kind of person does the work or because some identities come to take up that work more overtime? And so many of us are also guilty of this, right? The way we say female journalist, female comedian, female politician. Why? Why is it unimaginable for us to think that women or other gender minorities can occupy these positions?
Vandita
Bilkul (definitely), Sanchi, thank you for sharing that. I think it’s so important to always go back to remembering ki the bodies we are in will determine how we are treated and also everything that we do is treated. Picking up from the example you shared from Friends, I was recently like watching the rerun of Modern Family and there’s an episode where Phil says, ‘Oh you know, Claire is going back to work after a 20-year vacation’ and she stops him and she says ‘I wasn’t on vacation’ because for 20 years Claire was a mother and a homemaker and she raised three children and managed the house and did a bunch of other things. I love that they actually showed that, where she stops him and specifically raises that that wasn’t a vacation period for me. But thank you so much for the points you bring up. I think it also takes me to the mindset then that comes in when we talk about labour and dignity of labour right? I think often even conversations jo log dignity of labour care ke around karte hain (conversations that people have around dignity of labour care), it becomes about ye jobs aise hai jo koi nahi karna chahta but kisi ko karna pad raha hai isiliye hum inko bacha kaise sakte hain (these jobs are such that no one wants to do, but someone needs to do it so how do we save/protect them). The whole saving mentality comes in like you mentioned, different identities experience jobs differently and depending on who’s doing a job also we assign different values, right? If it’s women doing jobs like nurturing roles, we might assign a certain type of value, but we would not financially compensate for it as much, especially when it comes to caste, these are not even options given. People are forced into jobs that are not even given the sort of protection or given any sort of support, especially in keeping with the hazardous conditions they work in. So I think that whole idea of deserve also needs to be delinked from the idea of labour or just humanity in general. Because when we say that, you know, someone is deserving of a better job, then are we saying ki duniya mein aise log hai (there are people in this world) who are not deserving of such a job, right? Are we saying that there are people who don’t deserve good jobs? But that’s not true. Everyone deserves a job that fulfils them. Everyone deserves a job that has certain safety standards, provides a minimum living wage, and I would say even beyond like a minimum living wage, right? It gives you a wage that allows you to enjoy your life and not just live it so you don’t just survive through it, you’re thriving through life. And I think detaching the idea of deserve from it also really helped me move away from my personal mentality of saving someone or trying to fix something for someone because there is nothing to fix or save but our mindsets and of course work conditions have to be improved. Of course, certain jobs need to go away and they do not need to be assigned or relegated to certain specific identities, but we definitely do not ever have to enter a situation from a saving mindset. We have to enter a situation from the mindset of everyone has a right to an equitable, dignified work environment, and our ideas of morality and our ideas of what we think is good work and bad work cannot determine that.
Sanchi
Thanks for that, Vandita. And I think what you said about we don’t have to enter anything with a fixing mindset, but because all that we have to fix is our own mindset is so powerful and thanks for that. And another thing that then comes to mind here is how we also attach value to the kind of work a person is doing hain na? And I think that really feeds into our fixing mindset ki (that) ‘oh, this person is doing a job that we don’t really value’ because we have a moral Judgement about the work and the kind of work, more importantly, that they’re doing and I think that is really something that we need to change because, for example, people performing tasks considered intellectual are definitely more respected than persons performing more physical tasks hain na (right)? And I think a very, very clear example of this is a school setting wherein a teacher is more respected in any school setting than a janitor, even though dono jo kaam kar rahe hain (both are working), it’s equally required and critical in fact to how the school runs. And even though both the roles are critical, which means that the labour that they put in, the teacher and the janitor, both are necessary for a school to be functioning smoothly, there is a clear difference in how both are treated, right? Chaahe (whether) it’s the treatment by students, by parents, by other teachers or by the management. Hume pata hai (we know) whose labour is respected more. And I think even in our general perceptions of such labour, everything is so value judged, right? And this clearly reflects in our movies also, where a girl’s father, I think, might reject a boy she loves because he does a job that is not respected. Ek toh (firstly) already so many layers of problems with this, but talking about labour in specific, we have seen this whether in Raja Hindustani where Aamir Khan was a taxi driver or even in Ishq where he was a mechanic if I remember correctly. And in both the movies, the stories and the plotline really revolves around the fathers of the love interest rejecting the guy for the work he did for it was considered lowly somehow.
Vandita
Bilkul (definitely), Sanchi, I think what you’re sharing about the value we assigned to the type of work is extremely important because I think this is where that distinction comes in, right? That even if someone is financially making as much money, like economically bringing in the same amount of income, we have certain preconceived ideas of what work is good and what work is bad. And I give this example so much, but a priest that maybe comes home and does pooja in your house, or like in a temple, sometimes is earning less than what a driver would be earning. But the way a family would treat a priest is so much different than how they would treat a driver. So, it’s not always just class that comes in. We also assign a lot of value to certain roles just because one, of intellect versus physical needs to do the job, but also often because of caste connotations, because of historical reasons, and because we’re continuing the oppression of certain identities by doing this.
Sanchi
Yeah, that’s so true. And I think we’ve seen this all around us, that class-based social mobility, like even if you’re earning more, it doesn’t automatically mean that your job is as respected like you said, right? And a real-life example that comes to mind here is, I know someone who moved to the US and they started working as a taxi driver and they were earning good for themselves and they were happy in what they were doing. But people back home were just saying, ‘Oh ye gaya (he went to) US and what is he doing? He’s just driving cars around. Vo driver hai. (he’s a driver)’ And the moral Judgement that comes from it is so harsh, right? And that just goes on to tell us ki even if we move upwards in the class hierarchy, our systems just teach us to value some work less than the other.
Vandita
That’s an extremely relevant example, Sanchi. I think I’ve seen this happen so much even in my communities where people will often not take up jobs, they will ostracise persons and it is so interlinked to caste. It is so interlinked to our ideas of what is a good job, what is a bad job, because for so long we’ve been taught that this is not your place in life, right? You deserve better and that whole idea of deserve your place in life, those come from inherently caste-based assumptions. They come from inherently, like hegemonic identity assumptions because they’re assuming that each person, one, wants to have the same pathway in life. Second, they’re also assuming that if you take up some sort of job versus the other, you are less than the other. And often in certain situations, I find a certain moralising that happens about the job as well, right? Where it’s not just about, is this a good job or a bad job. It becomes a reflection of your virtue and your character.
Sanchi
That’s so true, Vandita. And like from what you pointed at, I cannot help but think of sex work here and the idea of morality that we attach to it. I mean, there is historical evidence of sex work existing as a profession, and today it has come to a point where people indulging in it are ostracized by the mainstream society. Now, there are cases where we need to intervene if there is bonded labour and if somebody is being forced into it, but what I’d like to talk about here is people exercising their choice and their agency to do sex work and how they are looked at, both by the society and by the law and we know it’s in a very, very demeaning way, which is so problematic.
Vandita
Definitely, Sanchi. I would also say that when we are talking about the concerns of sex workers, it becomes so important, like with any other profession, to centre their voices and their agency. Which means that, while a lot of sex workers have been forced into this profession, at least from what I have read of their thoughts through my work, this is the work that they do now and they don’t want you to come in and save them without providing them alternatives that they can truly take up. And they definitely do not want to be saved, right? They do not see themselves as helpless. They do not see themselves as at the mercy of NGO, government body. They need rights. They need to have protection from police officers, sometimes from other civil society members. They need protection from other, like stakeholders. What they don’t need is for us to moralise their job and what they don’t need is for us to create a whole saviour attitude around their profession anyway.
Sanchi
Yeah, that’s so true, Vandita. And I think you put that so beautifully. And there’s a poem that then comes to my mind, which I’d like to share because it’s very, very relevant to what we’re talking about right now. It’s a sex worker’s plea, and I think it’ll help us understand this better. So here goes,
Free from being treated like a burden, Free from a life where food is uncertain, Free from poverty, which bleeds me dry, Free from a situation which forced me to break down and cry. Free from a husband who beat me sore,Free from a house to run, oh, what a chore,Free from a belly bursting with his seed,Free from producing more mouths to feed. They look at me funny, as though I’ve gone astray,How do I explain to them that I’m happier this way? I make the calls and get to decide,Who lays on top and who gets to ride? My rates are set and so are my hours,How different am I from perks your corporates shower? It’s a hard job and I labour for money,Stop the ridicule and making this funny. Did you know I pay taxes? No labour is tax-free. There’s hard work that goes into what makes me ‘me’. So the next time you see a sex worker on the street,Just remember the simple sex worker’s plea. We do what we do because it pays. Why not make it legitimate, all of these lays?Why should I switch jobs and become what you want me to be? |
Vandita
That is so powerful. Thank you so much, Sanchi, for sharing that. I think the last line just really stays with me. I think the whole idea of just agency and choice and people being able to decide what they want to do and to be able to do it in a way that is fulfilling and dignified is so important. And in a scenario where abuse and violence and harm exist, it is so important to create a supportive environment for survivors. If we are talking about labour violations, if we are talking about unsafe labour conditions, what we need to do is not just go in there and save a certain, say, 10 people or 15 people. What we need over time is systemic change where the ecosystem for all people everywhere changes, where work conditions change, social security kicks in, where you have benefits even when you’re working independently. And I think Sanchi, just picking up from that, I think it’s also about what roles in society have traditionally been seen as essential and what have been seen as not so essential, right? And often they say, ‘oh the market will fix the rates and the market forces will fix things.’ But the pandemic for me also was really eye-opening in the sense to say that no, you know, the market does not know because the market set rates and set salary benchmarks for jobs, for professions that were completely irrelevant in a pandemic. It did not recognize the need for so many people who we do not think of as essential workers.
I’ll give you an example, for me, the Amazon delivery person was serving as an essential worker because, in the initial months of the pandemic itself, they were there delivering stuff everywhere. And I’m not saying they’re just delivering frivolous items, right? These were the people bringing us our N95 masks. These were the people bringing us our sanitisers. So the idea of who an essential worker is really shifted, I think at a community level as well, because now when I think of an essential worker, the first images that come to mind are so much more different. And I know that a lot of conversation during the pandemic happened about content creators and how we would not have been able to survive without all of this rich content, right? Especially for persons with the privilege to access internet, have devices with them. And I think some content creators that get completely missed out even over here, are porn actors, porn actors create content. There were reported spikes of consumption during the pandemic. While a lot of porn is unethical, a lot of porn is abusive and the industry in itself is problematic. There is a lot of ethical feminist porn that is coming up as well, and we don’t necessarily value them or give them the same sort of dignity and respect. I mean, think of what our country has done with Sunny Leone, the way we’ve treated her. I’ve seen her be extremely dignified in interviews, at speaking engagements, and somehow every person that engages with her thinks that because of her profession, it is okay to then be invasive and disrespectful towards her about her everyday life in so many different ways. And I think that really is a reflection on how we attach value to work because of the models we associate with these jobs.
Sanchi
Yeah, and like, it just ties up so well into a conversation that we’ve been having about what is really valued as work and if an artist painting a painting is seen as an artist, then why isn’t a porn actor seen as an artist?
Vandita
Definitely, Sanchi. I think in addition to some of the recent conflicts. And I know I’m jumping from one thing to the other, but when I talk about the politics of labour, as for you, I think it’s so enmeshed with each other that you can’t really have a conversation about one without the other. Like, when I think of this, I think about the value we assign to, say, housework and care work, and recently legal conversations that have come up about, say, paying a salary for these roles, right? I find that sometimes we settle for very simple solutions for what are actually very nuanced demands, for what are very complex problems. Like, I don’t think that my mother is a homemaker and I don’t think giving her a salary on a monthly basis is necessarily going to fix anything. I think there is so much more that needs to go into this in terms of policy change, in terms of maybe directing the income of the partner to their other partner who’s the homemaker or the home manager. Maybe the government, doing direct cash transfers in cases of the family anyway would not be able to afford to pay the mother, you know, in the house. What about land rights, property rights? And I think that of so many other cases as well. 70% above farmers in the country are women, and they don’t have land rights. They don’t have property rights. They till land that is still in the name of their husbands, their fathers, their brothers. I see that in other professions as well and I think that conversations around labour often get restricted to maybe a salary increase or a wage increase, but I don’t think that adequately addresses issues of dignity. It does not adequately address issues of rights, because rights are not just about money. Rights are about so many other benefits. And we never really, you know, we never really want to go beyond slightly more superfluous and the more easy thing of ‘Oh, let’s increase the income or let’s give them a salary’ to like an actual solution.
Sanchi
Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up, Vandita. I think that again goes on to show us how various identity markers, like our gender here, intersect with what we do on a daily basis. And I’ve always struggled with this, you know, ki (that) how do we even monetize something as work at home, which actually is what makes the country’s economy run, right? Because if one day my mother, who’s a homemaker, decides that she’s not going to cook, she’s not going to clean, my father won’t be able to go to the office, right? And since we’ve monetized only one kind of work, how do we even grapple with all these complex questions? And I think what you shared really helped me build and really start thinking about it in a more holistic manner. So really, thanks a lot for that.
Vandita
Definitely, thanks, Sanchi. And I think something that has helped me put this into perspective is thinking about how our lives are so often subsidised by people living in the cities, but people living in conditions that we would not want to live in ourselves. So the fact that I, as a modern-day Indian woman, am able to go to a job and do something outside of her house is because my life is subsidised by a domestic worker who I pay very minimum wages. Even the minimum wage laws in our country are laughable, right? Like, the income levels are extremely low. But my life is subsidised by that domestic worker and I’m able to do other things and create more money, or like more financial value for money outside because there is someone who then takes care of my home, for some people, takes care of their children, like in so many different ways, right, as a nanny, as a domestic worker. And I think these are conversations we’re not having. And these are also things we’re not thinking about when we think about what is fair remuneration, what are fair wages for people because of whom we’re even able to pursue what we want to do. And I think in line with this, I’d love to now introduce our guests. Today, we have with us Sarah who is the Senior Program Officer for Knowledge and Advocacy at One Future Collective. Sarah is also one of the Co-leads on a research study that looks at gendered care work and housework during the pandemic. And we thought she’d be a great fit for everyone to listen in and really understand the value of labour and the politics that goes behind labour. Sarah, so happy to have you today with us.
Sarah
Hi, so happy to be here. I’ve already learnt so much from your conversation.
Sanchi
Hi Sarah, you’re always so kind and it’s so nice to have you here on the podcast today. Like, you know, we’re talking about the politics of labour and we’d love to know your take on what you think is really seen as valuable labour in our society. And how does identity then intersect with this value?
Sarah
So I would like to start by quoting Zadie Smith, she says, ‘I think the traditional feminine arts of homemaking or dressmaking or whatever are shamefully undervalued. They’re doing what I’m doing, making a space for another person to be in, creating an architecture for life. There’s no greater task, but also no more mundane one.’ And I think this essentially summarises what we see is valuable work. As Vandita rightly mentioned previously in the conversation, we have such a capitalistic idea of work that we don’t consider care work or domestic work or anything that involves nurturing and anything that cannot have measured output as valuable. And consequently, care work in domestic work is highly undervalued in spite of the fact that it’s essential. It’s something that keeps the world going. It’s something that we all need all throughout our lives and at different points and lives also have to contribute to. To answer the second part of your question, which is what is the role that identity plays here? The first aspect of identity that I would like to explore is gender. Like Zadie Smith also mentioned, homemaking and care work is tagged as feminine. It’s a consensus that women are supposed to do it. It’s a feminine thing to dond the problem with this is twofold. First, because it’s considered feminine, because we’ve labelled it feminine, people also assume it to be easy and, you know, weak or like not important or secondary, which reflects in the way we treat domestic workers, like people who come home and work for us, and also in the way we treat our mums when it comes to homemaking. Like usually when they whine about domestic work or they whine about certain problems at home or coordination or the fact that they’re not getting time to themselves. We usually look at it as whining. We usually don’t want to listen to it, or we usually think of it as trivial, whereas that may not be the case if someone is complaining about having a bad day at office, for instance. And the second problem with this is that because we label it as feminine, girls, from the very beginning of their lives, see women around them carrying the burden of household work, they’re taught that this is their essence, this is their main purpose in life, that this is what they’re meant for. And that is really unfair. I can’t really understand how you tie in gender with the type of, you know, with this idea that housework can only be performed by women or only should be performed by women. It’s very possible that in a family maybe the dad is more suited to stay at home and do the nurturing work, whereas the mum is more suited to go outside and work. But that sort of a setting will be very unacceptable in the society and that may cause a lot of stress for everyone in the family, and that is really unfair. Another aspect of identity that I would like to explore is caste. So, Rajasthan is my native place and over there, there’s a certain caste called Bhangans. They are supposed to clean toilets. No one else cleans toilets. Only Bhangans clean toilets and there is this lady, old lady, who’s been cleaning toilets at my Nani’s place since the time I was a kid. I don’t know her name. Nobody in my family knows her name, but she’s just the Bhangan and she’s supposed to clean toilets, her children are supposed to clean toilets. It’s as though even before they’re born, their caste is determining that they’re supposed to do that job, and they’re not very well respected because of the job they do. The similar thing goes for Gujjars, who are people who were supposed to tend to cows or rear cows and it’s assumed that their children will do the same. So, this sort of structure is again, very oppressive because it limits the possibility that they see for themselves. It limits the possibility for their children because they cannot climb up the social ladder. They’re not respected. They’re not treated as equals.
Vandita
Thank you so much for that, Sarah. This actually reminds me of something that Kiruba says, which is that ‘caste in itself is violence.’ It’s not just caste-based violence, right? Because the existence of an external social categorization that not only pre-determines your position in life, but it predetermines the path your life is supposed to take and it also assigns and takes away the dignity that you are allowed to have in life, at least from a societal perspective that is inherently violent. And we see that so much when we talk about labour. Just going to pick up on something else that you shared that, you know, when women talk, like when women who manage the house talk about their problems, it’s seen as whining but we’re somehow very comfortable with people who go to formal jobs talking for hours about why they hate their jobs. But we don’t even allow our homemakers, our caregivers, the same benefit, the same easy, simple luxury of being able to say ‘I had a really bad day at work. Everyone around me was horrible. I wish I wasn’t doing this job.’ Even that is seen as whining and we don’t assign the same importance we do to maybe a friend ranting about their bad day at office. From that, I’d just like to share this quote from the book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State published in 1884, which goes on to also state that the emergence of private property is what led to women’s household work sort of sinking into insignificance in comparison to man’s what is seen as productive labour. It does look at the whole binary of work from a very binary gendered lens, but it brings up a very important point that even a century later is quite valid, right? It’s quite ingrained in our society. So, Sarah, I’d love to understand from you. I want to start by asking that what do we mean when we say unpaid household and care work? And is there a gendered aspect to this work?
Sarah
So, unpaid household and care work refers to domestic work like cleaning, sweeping, laundry, cooking, gardening and anything else that is needed to run the house and ensure the well-being of the people who live in it. An unpaid household and care work is definitely gendered in nature in India and this is suggested by a number of trends. So for instance, you know, let’s discuss women’s participation in the labour force in India. So it’s a paradox, ok? Like, in spite of a decrease in the gender gap in education and a decline in fertility, female labour force participation rate in India is amongst the lowest in the world. And it’s even more weird when we see that there’s a U-shaped relationship between education and a woman’s decision to enter the labour force in India, which essentially means that post middle-school education, the chances of a woman entering the labour force increases as she acquires more education. That said, I think it’s important to highlight two facts. The first being that data suggests that there is a strong negative relationship between the education attainment of a husband and his wife’s decision to enter the labour force. And the odds of a woman entering the labour force decreases by more than 50% if her husband is a college graduate. Another fact that I would like to highlight is that there is also a negative relationship between a woman’s decision to enter the labour force, the number of children she has and if she’s married, with the odds of a woman’s decision to enter the labour force declining by more than 60% if she’s married. These statistics are a representation of the gendered nature of household and unpaid care work. Like the societal norms and culture has made it so normal for care work to be a woman’s first priority, and it’s become such an acceptable part of our lives that we no longer even acknowledge it or consider that care work is real work. And this division of work based on gender, instead of abilities, puts women at a disadvantage. It makes it more difficult for them to achieve professional goals. So, for instance, women who go to work today outside of their homes are expected to balance both the home and their professional office or workspace. And you know, the image of an ideal woman is one who can balance all of this. Why expect so much out of a woman? I mean, we’re human beings, right? And like the same expectations are not set on men. And somehow women are, you know, made to feel guilty or made to feel like failures if they fail to deliver on, you know, household work. And the clearest example of this is, so when I was in school, one of my classmates, her mum, was a politician. And so essentially when my friend didn’t do very well in exams, like the supervisor, she came and she told her ki (that) you know, ‘Tell your mum to pay more attention on your studies. Politics can keep happening.’ And in spite of being a woman, she said this to her as though like my friend’s education or a child’s education is only the woman’s responsibility and this happens all the time. For any wrongdoing of the child, people raise their fingers towards their mother as though the father or other family members have no responsibility towards nurturing or taking care of the child or raising the child and this puts women at a disadvantage right from the outset because they have to juggle these responsibilities, it means that they have to take into account greater constraints if they’re thinking of pursuing further education or if they’re thinking of taking on a more demanding job. So, it’s not a level playing field for women out there.
Sanchi
Thank you so much for that, Sarah. I think I really resonated with what you shared, especially about how the school setting or the education responsibility of the children falls upon the mother. And I remember from my school days, whenever I did not do well in a test, the teacher would come back to me saying ‘tumhari mummy dhyaan nahi deti kya tumhari padhai pe?’ (does your mother not pay attention to your studies?) and it was never ‘tumhare papa dhyaan nahi dete’ (your father doesn’t pay attention) or like anybody else in the family. And I think what you shared really helped me understand closer home, how this really manifests in our everyday life. So, really thanks a ton for that. And from what you shared, it really got me thinking about how our situations have drastically changed this year because of the onset of the pandemic and then the subsequent lockdown. And this is what brings me to my next question to you which is, how do you think that this problem that is of unpaid household care work and the gendered nature of it, how is it that this problem is manifesting during the pandemic? And why should we even think about unpaid household and care work in the first place? Why do you think it is important to talk about it, especially right now?
Sarah
Okay, so I’m going to begin by answering your first question. And in the pandemic, there are like two aspects to this problem. The first being that more people are staying at home, were staying at home, because of the lockdown and so there was more work to do at home. And the second, there was very limited or absolutely no access to outside domestic help, so that also increased the burden of domestic work. And you know, it is very difficult to argue against the fact that unpaid domestic and care work facilitates paid work, education and almost every other activity in our lives. And like I mentioned previously, the problem is that this work has been labelled as feminine and it’s become an acceptable norm for women to shoulder the burden of unpaid domestic and care work disproportionately. And again, this trend has costs, especially for the people who are shouldering these responsibilities because women are engaged in domestic work and care work, they cannot develop the skills or engage in education to get a paying job. It takes away from their financial independence and it often makes them vulnerable to, you know, abuse because they would have no independent finances or places to go to or people to consult if they’ve been doing only household, domestic and care work all their lives. And you know, household and care work is also not accounted for in the GDP- this is again a reflection of the fact that household and care work is not given importance, its contribution is unacknowledged and this is also reflected in the way domestic help is treated in India. It’s an issue of social justice and gender equity and you know, the fact that household and care work has a gendered nature implies that women are conditioned to feel guilty for failing to complete these duties and their worth is judged by their ability to perform them. And, like, you know, this is very evident from the latest round of the NSS survey, which suggests that the biggest reason why girls under the age of 18 drop out of school is that they need to engage in domestic work. And this is just to say that in every debate about gender equality, it is important to acknowledge household and care work that is performed and to change the attitude and norms around it.
Vandita
Those are some incredibly important points, Sarah. Thank you so much for bringing them up. I think I saw this so much during the pandemic where there were instances of male academics being able to publish more whereas the publishing rates of female academics went down simply because the increased burden of care work was so disproportionate. There was a lack of access to domestic help bringing me back to an earlier point where without having other women, especially women sometimes from oppressed groups, allows for our lives to be subsidised and without that, it will often be detrimental to women and other marginalised identities, and not necessarily for men. Even that during the pandemic, like, there was a higher rate of dropout amongst girls and a higher, like, loss of jobs amongst women as compared to men. Of course, most of the data that we do have is very binary in terms of gender, but thank you so much for all of these extremely pertinent points, and I think it gives me a lot to think about some of those relations between data points for things that I had never thought about. I was also recently reading a book called Data Feminism by Catherine and Lauren, and they mentioned that the International Feminist Collective in the 1970s launched what was the Wages for Housework campaign, where they used the term reproductive labour in contrast to productive labour, which is your traditionally paid labour instead of calling it unproductive to denote unpaid. And this terminology comes from the understanding that reproductive labour made it possible for those involved in productive tasks, right? What we see as like office work, work in factories, etc, to continue to perform these tasks. And I think it’s so important to reimagine our work like that. To think of our work with dignity and respect in every aspect.
Sanchi
That’s so beautiful, Vandita and I’m sure going to be using that terminology going forward. So thanks for sharing that. And thank you so much for joining us today, Sarah. It was a treat talking to you and getting to hear your thoughts. And thank you so much for all that you’ve got us to think about.
Sarah
Thank you so much for having me. I love being here and talking about this essential, like, having this essential conversation.
Vandita
Thank you, Sarah. You were wonderful. And to everyone who tuned in, thank you so much too.
Vandita
Until next time everyone, stay with us on our journey towards a radically kinder world.
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For more delightful discussions on practicing feminism and fostering communities of care, check out the other episodes of the Nurturing Radical Kindness podcast! Until then, here’s a reflection activity for you to mull over.
| Reflection Activity – The Politics of Labour Reflect on the individuals whose labor sustains your everyday life. Take a moment to consider how their contributions are valued and compensated, and what that reveals about the broader systems at play. |
About the Nurturing Radical Kindness Podcast
Radical Kindness is the ethos and practice that forms and informs One Future Collective. It guides our constitution as an organisation and is the core value that guides our work. It is a politics of love, fighting against apathy and hopelessness. Often being ‘hard’, ‘stoic’ or ‘rigid’, is considered crucial for social change, and it is this very notion that radical kindness challenges. It espouses that being kind, compassionate and loving in our activism can still pave the way for dissent, defiance, growth and rebuilding. It is a tool we seek to use to rebuild our systems with care, nurturance and justice at their core. It allows us to hold various stakeholders, including ourselves, accountable in how we interact with ourselves and our communities and to build towards a lived reality of social justice collaboratively.
Hosted by Sanchi Mehra and Vandita Morarka of One Future Collective, this podcast attempts to unpack what it means to be radically kind and how we can practice it through conversations with members of the One Future Collective community.