The Devaluation of Women’s Work

by JAYANTI ALAM

Of all the Human Rights a woman or the “inferior” human being can think of, it is the right to work or an income-generating work that can perhaps give her an upward social mobility and an awareness of her freedom. Work is of greatest significance for women. However much the right to work or employment is not a Fundamental Right in our Constitution, however much women’s household work is not recognised while calculating the nation’s GDP and however much women are invariably paid far less than men (quite often men too are not paid the statutory minimum wages in the unorganised sector), women’s work, both at home and outside, carries an immense value in the growth and continuation of the human civilisation. The reasons behind are rather obvious, though not recognised, whatever may have been the stage of civilisation.

The first and the foremost reason is that women own, though do not control, the repro-ductive system. For men, the contribution towards the birth of the next generation may be a pleasure for a few minutes; for women, it is a responsibility not only till the birth of the baby, but for months (for breastfeeding) and years for the physical and mental health of the child. Even an illiterate mother happens to be the “first teacher” in a growing child’s life. The humane and ethical values are imparted by the mother or the other elderly women in the family, however much that significant impact remains unrecog-nised in all kinds of social and religious systems.

The second vital work of all married women is the procurement, whether cooked or not, of food for the family. It is common knowledge that (however un-recognised in the male-dominated world, which may be responsible for food production, food accessibility and food utilisation) women are in charge of the food security of their family (whether marital or natal). This work has started from day one of human civilisation, that is, when human beings were food-gatherers only. Hunting of wild animals used to be the prerogative of the male, since that involved courage and physical strength (women in the unorganised sectors, though, do not do less laborious work), but the eatable forest products were gathered mainly by women. Once fire was discovered and humans started cooking food, firewood and water too were collected by women trudging miles. This tradition is continuing to this day, however much science and technology have offered an easy and comfortable life to the women “haves”. Yet only women are employed in the labour-intensive chores.

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A large number of democratic India’s population has continued as “have-nots”, particularly the forest-dwellers, adivasis and Dalits; the number of poor or deprived even amongst the upper castes and the once powerful Muslims and Christians are not to be ignored while talking about the growing plight of women, who are inevitably in charge of the food security of their families. This difficult but unavoidable task has become, and is continuing to become, more and more arduous due to the receding jungles and water sources; food gathering along with the collection of medicinal herbs and other forest products, or, in other words, the means to their livelihood, are increasingly becoming unavailable to them. The Forest Laws deny access to these people; they are not even allowed to collect twigs, dry leaves or broken branches from under the trees! Yet, the forests are disappearing, since no Law is effective enough to work against the dishonest forest guards, whose main source of income is the “kickbacks” they get from the timber merchants who, in turn, may be serving the politically powerful or the poachers.

Nature’s laws provide for everybody. That is why the need for carnivorous animals; otherwise, all leaves and grasses would have been eaten up by the herbivores. But human greed and the capitalist urge for profit maximisation have successfully destroyed Nature’s balance and added to all kinds of environmental degradation and pollution. Scientists are warning the human race about global warming and the depleting source of Oxygen. A human being needs as much Oxygen that 10 fully grown trees can provide. But, those remain confined to meetings, speeches and documents and the developed nations of the West, the worst culprits, remain undisturbed, continuing with their motto of world capitalism or neo-imperialism or the system of widening the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots”.

The world conference on bio-diversity was recently held at Hyderabad; but, can discussions solve the problem? Strong resolution on the part of the political leaders is required. Promises and resolutions remain on the paper and speeches; never ever are those put to reality. Not only are agricultural lands being surrendered to the SEZs, even a river in Chhattisgarh got sold out to an MNC! So, women, being in charge of food security, now have to walk miles to fetch the daily needs of water and firewood. They are also in charge of rearing livestock and kitchen gardening. They obviously do not enjoy the luxury of cooking on gas-ovens; the meagre quantity of kerosene, available to them from the so-called PDS or “public distribution system”, or may be from the black-markets, need to the saved for the kerosene lamp they have to light after sunset. A woman should not be surprised if her husband or any other male member of her family acts as an agent of the hoarder!

Once human civilisation walked into the stage of food production from the stage of mere food gathering, women’s work did not decrease. Even though women (in the Hindu patriarchal society) were prohibited from ploughing or even touching the ploughshare, all other agricultural activities needing sustained effort and endurance like sowing the seed, manuring, transplanting, weeding, harvesting and threshing etc. were, and still are, done by female family labour or wage labour, being deprived of property rights; she is not allowed to market the excess crops not even in case of a female-headed family! The wages or remuneration paid in kind were and still are extremely low and almost half of what the male labour gets. She did not, and the poor among these women still do not, enjoy the right over her income, nor could or can she fulfil any of her very limited desires; her identity was and is only of a mother, wife, daughter-in-law or daughter and therefore she is found to take care of the children, old and sick and male members of her marital family. It is her cardinal duty to “serve” all, particularly the males, and provide them food security at the cost of her own starvation or low level of nutrition, even though, as a mother or would-be-mother, she needed the best of health and care.

Infant and maternal mortality rates are high in India and other developing countries, since women and girl-children suffer under the oppressive inhuman pressures of socio-religious customs from below and capitalism or the brutally competitive market economy from above. Both these forces refuse to recognise women’s contribution to the GDP, because those are unpaid work. Tradition, hand-in-hand with patriarchy, regards women’s work at home, namely, cooking, cleaning, taking care of children and the old etc.., and in the agricultural land or cottage and home-based industries as zero, because those bring no visible income to the family and any such work is regarded as their “natural” duties; it is the price they pay for their right to live whatever may be the quality of that life. Nobody calculates the money saved by the family because of women’s household work/labour. Would it have been possible for men to work if women did not take care of their food and other needs? This is the typical mindset of the majority of the male population in all civilisations of the world—however different they may be in terms of their race identities, religion, culture or economic development. This has thrown almost all “earning” women into the hell of the unorganised sector—so that they are treated as lesser humans and inferior workers.

If we look at this fact impartially, women definitely are less qualified or skilled, because they get no or lesser opportunities for skill-development. The universal bias against a woman’s capabilities, intelligence and learning capacities is due to man’s inability or unwilling-ness to understand the value of the woman’s work at home or within her family. This creates a silent and invisible “inferiority complex” amongst women. That is why religious dicta have been invented to keep “the better productive worker” under total or unquestionable control. That is why women are denied property or income rights and thrown into those categories of economic production, where their income will be zero or negligible, and where the labour laws do not work. Women and children are made to work, without rest, for incessant number of hours; more often than not they are humiliated, physically tortured, threatened and blackmailed after sexual abuse at their work-place and even at home. Rape and the social stigma associated with it are indiscriminately used not only to force the women and girl-children into submission (boys too are not free from inhuman sexual abuse and “sex tourism” is an extremely profitable business); but also to “teach a lesson” to the men of the enemy clan or caste. This is a common practice.

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ALL governments in the “developing” countries are fully aware of the plight of women and children in the unorganised sector (and in society, in general); yet, no effort has ever been made towards bringing all productive sectors under the Labour Laws. No trade union, of whatever political party, has ever tried to organise the workers in the unorganised sector on the basis of the demand of their basic human rights! The argument offered is that women and children are un-skilled workers. But, why then, are they allowed or forced to remain unskilled? Why are no education and vocational training available to them? Why are women made to do the arduous work of carrying heavy bricks on their heads and never the relatively comfortable job of a mason? Why have women to do all the arduous and monotonous agricultural work and yet not get a share in the money earned through the sale of the produce? And why has a woman worker no right to decide the crop-pattern, particularly when they have to be in charge of food security? Wrong signals from the world capitalist market and the culture of commercialisation and consumerism are tempting the farmers to cash-crops. But, all economic surveys reiterate the fact that a woman Panchayat Pradhan or a women’s “self-help group” invariably opt for food crops, chosen according to the nature of the soil, water or irrigation availability and weather-pattern. They give utmost importance to easy availability of water, manure, properly working schools with mid-day meals, roads, street lights (so that crimes become difficult) if, of course, there is electricity. To put it simply, women in power are fully concerned about the welfare of their families and the next generations.

Tribal women in particular believe that they must leave for their children what they got from their forefathers. This is, of course, in reference to Nature’s bounty provided it is not robbed by world capitalism. They are also fully aware of the undeniable fact that child labour can be abolished not by laws, but by making school-going free and compulsory, as stipulated in our Constitution.

Women’s weak fallback position is primarily attributable to the prevalent ignorance about the significance of their work. Researchers too have underscored women’s work by measuring it in money terms, or in terms of assessing “real” national output. The value of female’s work is measured in terms of their wages (which inevitably is much lower than that of the male, if not half). Application of “time-use” analyses for assessing women’s contribution to food security has hardly been done. The indispensable dependence of the household on women’s work and their capability to do multiple tasks simul-taneously are supposed to be unquantifiable features beyond the monetary measures. But, it is not difficult for a gender-conscious economist to calculate how much money a servant would have been paid for performing all these endless number of works or duties (as ordained by the social norms, that did not change notwith-standing the notions of modernity and democracy, which are expected to do away with all kinds of inequalities). We must remind ourselves of a few judgements of the British Courts, which ordered the husbands to pay wages to their wives for performing so many household chores. The number of hours that women spend on domestic activities is very high (where men normally have no contribution), but the total time spent by women on the family farm is not very much less than men. One case-study in a Gujarat village shows that women spend 1.8 hours per day, while men spend 1.62 hours in the farm. Besides, the value of women’s work is not much less than men’s, if calculated at the male wage-rate.

But all systems of study of knowledge are mainly male-dominated, though the concepts of equality and justice to all have also originated in male-heads. So, women’s work at home is seldom calculated in monetary terms and women’s work outside is calculated in terms of the prevailing female wages. In general, women are responsible for 70 per cent of food security, calculated even at the female wage-rate; yet, the females are indiscriminately killed either through infanticide or foeticide, through malnutrition or starvation, no health-care, bride-burning etc.

A large section is transformed into living-dead by forcing them into prostitution or devdasis. I have been regularly attending the meetings of “Durbar Mahila Samannay”, an organisation of sex-workers in Kolkata. A majority of them had been kidnapped and raped even when they were minors; sometimes, their own father or parents sold them for two morsels of food in return. The parents even sell them, as brides, for the grooms from Haryana or Punjab. This is a common practice with BPL Muslims in Hyderabad; girls of 10 or 11 are sold out to the middle-aged Arab Sheikhs who, in turn, sell them or use them as sex-slaves. The bride-price may be as low as Rs 3000! The devdasis in South India, particularly in Karnataka, are also sex-slaves to the priests, even though they are married to the reigning deity of that temple. Other girls “choose” this “work” to support their parents and siblings after failing to get a job due to lack of adequate education and training. Is it really a “choice”? With a low sex-ratio in India (due to the “tradition” of female infanticide amongst the Rajputs, some Brahmins and Khatri castes and happily copied by the lower castes, however deep their century-old hatred of the upper-castes) and the present “scientific” elimination of a female foetus, men of Haryana and Punjab, for example, do not find women to get married to. The absolute number of marriageable girls is going down further because of the booming sex-trade. This is most “organised” in the world of unorganised work, because the process works perfectly throughout the world in strict hierarchical layers of “operators” mostly patronised (behind the scene) by the owners of political and economic powers in a society. It is quite similar to the “mafia” of drugs, natural resources of the newly independent nations, and, of course, of arms supply to the terrorists and other destructive groups.

After all, it is a widely known fact that prostitution is the oldest profession of human civilisation, even when it is the most inhuman and dehumanising work for women. The level of threat, blackmailing and exploitation is the highest because of the typical hypocrisy of the male world! Males and the societal norms framed and enforced by them declare sex outside marriage as deplorable, but they themselves cannot live without that. The females, who are forced to offer them this “service”, are branded as immoral and sinners and a child, born accidentally of this lust of men, is equally dehumanised and ostracised, as if a baby can commit a sin!

The women’s movement and the awareness created by the basic ideals and norms of democracy (however imperfect it may be even after 75 years of its practice in India) has given these women, apart from women in all other categories of work in the unorganised sector, some kind of self-confidence. So they are organised or try to organise themselves to demand recognition as a “worker”, as much like a woman worker in a home-based or small-scale industry or on the farm land. The encouraging examples are the women’s self-help groups (inspired by the widely acclaimed success of the “Grameen Bank” of Bangaldesh) like the “Self-employed Women’s Association” or SEWA of Gujarat and the surrounding areas.

The “Chipko” Movement of present Uttara-khand, as well as the “Narmada Bachao” movement are so dear to the women’s heart, because they feel and act like a mother to the Nature also. Being in charge of food security of their family, they know best the value of Nature left in its “natural” state. They know and realise through their interaction with Nature that she is as much abused as the women workers are and both have lost the basic rights of being protected and the opportunities to develop their natural capabilities. All the religions of the world, in a greater or lesser degree, have prescribed women’s position as subordinate to men. Capitalism too has done the same to women. They are forced to work without any rights or recognition.

The author is a Research Fellow with the Indian Council of Social Science Research. She is also a human rights activist.