Running A House Is A Full Time Job. Why Are We Expected To Do It For Free?

Running a household is not an easy job. It is a full-time commitment, that demands your devotion relentlessly. The chores never end, and just when you have ticked off all the to-do things from your checklist, the cycle starts again. In most households, the burden of household chores still falls on women. Whether or not they hold a full-time or part-time job or no job at all, doesn't make much of a difference in this matter. The worst part is that women neither get help or any monetary benefits in return for all the work that they do.

A 2020 survey by Gallup found that among heterosexual US couples, it is women who shoulder the primary responsibility when it comes to household work. While 58 percent women are responsible for doing laundry, 51 percent take up chores like cleaning the house and preparing meals. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data claims that in India women spend 352 minutes per day on domestic work, as compared to 52 minutes spent by men. The disparity is glaring and inexcusable. Also, you don't need data to tell you how thankless these chores are.

Also Read: Men, Household Chores and Cleaning: Don't they see the mess?

You may spend the better part of your day managing the household, ensuring there are clean spoons and dishes to eat in, crisp fresh clothes to wear, or that fused bulb over the washbasin has been changed, or that there isn't a speck of dust on the drawing-room display. But then there comes a day in every woman's life when she wonders, who cares about all this, apart from her? Does anyone care about the effort that is being put 24 by seven to keep a house functional apart from her? The dirty dishes cannot wait, the school homework has a deadline, the winterwear has to be aired before the weather turns. But why is it mostly women in households who lose their sleep over such chores? Isn't it the responsibility of everyone who lives in a house to ensure that it runs smoothly?

The consequences of this gendered approach to household work are graver than we want to concede. According to a 2016 UNICEF report, girls between the ages of five and 14 spend an average of 40 per cent more time on household chores than boys of the same age do. Little girls between the ages of five and nine spend 30 percent more of their time, on activities like cooking, cleaning and collecting water and firewood. That is how early the conditioning of girls as "home-makers" starts in our society. "This unequal distribution of labour among children also perpetuates gender stereotypes and the double-burden on women and girls across generations," said UNICEF’s Principal Gender Advisor Anju Malhotra in a press release, and I couldn't agree more. You can read more about the UNICEF report here.

Also Read: Seven Reasons Women Stay Out of Indian Workforce

What we learn in childhood is what we live by in our adult life. It takes a huge effort to unlearn these gendered stereotypes because it isn't just men who perpetuate them. Women themselves have internalised such beliefs. Don't we know of moms who consider it a matter of tragedy if their son or husband has to fetch a glass of water for themselves? Or women who fuss over eating habits of their family, and take it upon themselves to appease everyone, rather than trust other members of the household with the job?

The idea of putting a price to household chores is not for women to get paid to them but, for everyone in the house to learn what these chores cost them. Any labour is often considered of value only when a price tag is put to it. Only then do people understand that just because someone is putting their labour for free, doesn't mean that their efforts should go unappreciated. Besides, it is simply unfair to one gender to put in hours and hours of free labour due to discriminatory notions.

Pick up that broom, wash those dishes, offer to contribute to taking care of household chores on a daily basis, equally. If women decide to put a price on it, the cost would be hefty.

The views expressed are the author's own.