Should women be paid for domestic work?

Why should domestic work and farm labour done by women not be accepted in India's socio-economic policy framework? The government is making gender discrimination by not measuring the role of women in making the country's gross domestic product (GDP). The Census of India places household chores in a non-working population with beggars and students. The number of non-working population in the census 2011 was 728.9 million. The official definition states that these are people who did not work of any nature in any time period. Of these 165.6 million people were the main "discharge of domestic responsibilities", they are mostly 96.5 percent or 159.9 million women.

There is a clear and present need to recognize this work, but also to redistribute it. Household duties should be shared among members of a family. The study, published in 2011 in the journal Mountain Research and Development, entitled "Women in the Contribution to Household Food and Economic Security, reported that women in the mountain region" did no work ". However, when analyzing their activities, it was observed that when the men of the area worked an average of nine hours, the women worked for 16 hours. There is a discussion among women thinkers as to what the pay of women will actually be. Sociologist Ann Oakley, who studied the history of homework in her path-breaking books published in the 1970s, said that 'wages for the home' only imprisons women within the home, increasing their social isolation.

The debate over monetary remuneration for homework has remained unresolved within the women's movement, with tools for measuring the value attaching women's unpaid work in national economies become more sophisticated. These tasks that are part of the responsibility of women that maintain human life and reproduce the labor force are suppressed as usual.

The question of how and how to measure the value of house tax has received serious attention from women domestic workers and their trade unions in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere. Their demands include an hourly minimum wage, a weekly day off, an annual bonus, and protection of their physical autonomy in the workplace. This is an agenda that all parties can and cannot just include in their election manifesto, but can strengthen them politically by recognizing them and taking the mandate of homework seriously.

Priyanka Saurabh, Hisar, Haryana