Unpaid Work & Women

What's work? (Let's see what Google has to say)

Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.

So, unpaid work would mean the production of goods or services that are consumed by those within a household or outside but not for sale in the market. Also this activity would be paid to be done by a third person.

What's the situation like right now?

It is no secret that women perform the bulk of unpaid work in households and are forced to do the same in the paid labor force. Even efforts of several generations of scholars to make unpaid work visible, it still remains marginalized in most methods of measuring the economic capabilities of the household, community or the country at the larger scale.

Unpaid domestic work within household

Though with times changing, the proportion of women's and men's share in household labor has changed, with it narrowing slightly from women's division as it was overburdened before. Yet in many dual-income families, women are seen to be engaged disproportionately in household work. Women are primarily considered as "responsible" for all the unpaid work labelling them as their "feminine duties" irrespective of their educational qualification or social status.

Unpaid Informal Caregiving (Say What!!) 

Informal caregiving often falls disproportionately on women's shoulders who are mostly family members, relatives & sometimes even friends or neighbors. The recipients of their unpaid care are usually children, elder & ill individuals. Although men's participation in caregiving & childcare has increased with dual-income families yet women are considered primarily responsible for the caregiving within the households and even within communities.... thanks to the fact that are they are "more selfless" or maybe obligated to.

Unpaid work within paid work

Now, this might be a little difficult to detect but unpaid work within paid workplaces comes in through cheeky varieties. To help you understand it clearly let's discuss a simple example:

When an employer asks you to provide a service or product that is not part of your work profile like providing care, informal cleaning, some other service or maintenance of interpersonal relationships for the institution's sake in order to "keep the family" together is what unpaid work with paid work apparently looks like.

(Some employer are commonly seen as calling themselves a family, which is equally harmful wherein a "family" you are exploited with free labor.)

How to tackle?

Though all this unpaid work contributes to overall well-being of the household & collectively at  national level it is invisible in the database and owns no value in almost all legislative policies. And we who mostly are doing this unpaid labor or are at the receiving end of it merely sees it off as a way of society but this needs to change and  to change it the following should be opted at ground level (A.k.a) What you can do as a common citizen.

Redistribute- Amongst everything we can not overlook the fact that a lot of middle class household need to redistribute household duties excluding any gender bias.

Reduction- Technology, infrastructure, basic services must be made accessible to women so that they know what all they are offering for free in the name of their " womanly duties".

Recognition- To recognize all the unpaid work done and a formal payment should be made.(this one's too strong eh!? But very necessary)  

Now, that you know about this unpaid labor that women are forced into and have something to say leave a comment down below or we can connect on instagram !