It has been over 40 days that the Indian streets have almost come to a standstill due to the prolonged period of nationwide lockdown. The lockdown was announced in order to control the incessant contamination of the coronavirus outbreak that has engulfed the world for quite some time now.
The lockdown situation curtails down human interactions significantly owing to the norms of social distancing. This results in restricted public life, very limited scope of mobility, unavailability of domestic help, and the dearth of doorstep delivery services including food and groceries. Especially, for the chunk of the urban office-going middle class, the requirements of working ‘from’ home has been coupled with the needs of working ‘for’ home. The hitherto devalued private space of domestic labor immediately translates into a space demanding efforts, efficiency, and engagement as much is true for any professional space of work.
Not as easy as it seems
Notwithstanding the prerequisite of specific skill-sets for working as professional, domestic ‘management’ equally requires the attainment of certain kinds of skills, if not more. Especially, with an irregular inflow of groceries and budget limitations due to sudden pay-cuts, it is extremely important to plan ahead and judiciously. After all, is not all that management courses teach you is how to expect the best outcome out of limited resources?
Just because your steamy hot dinner was already kept by the domestic help or you cared less about cooking after a long day at office relying on the food delivery apps or even had the luxury to book the early morning grocery delivery slot for the last minute refilling of grocery stocks, does not mean that this domestic nitty-gritty demands lesser attention to details.
Involves physical as well as emotional labor
From daily chores including cleaning, cooking, maintaining the groceries, doing the dishes, washing clothes, etc. to caregiving, a huge array of work falls under the category of domestic labor. When these chores are already taken care of mostly by the woman at home and the domestic help before even one gets to notice the number of efforts it involves, one tends to take these efforts for granted. These are taken as either leisurely works done by the person staying at home or labor that can easily be bought in exchange for money, in case of the domestic help.
What goes unseen is not only the physical but also the emotional toil behind all such efforts. The monotony of these chores hand-in-gloves with the lack of appreciation and timely incentives and the least opportunity for personal care of the caregiver is particularly stressful mentally and emotionally.
When was the last time you saw your mother finishing a full-length feature film at one go or the domestic help to take a pause before s/he quickly gobbles his/her food?
The gendered aspect
When it comes to domestic labor, ‘gender’ becomes the elephant in the room that cannot go unnoticed.
A 2018 UN Women report shows that women’s contribution to unpaid domestic labor is approximately 2.6 times more than men’s. Though unpaid domestic labor is not factored in statistically, a recent study suggests that women worldwide could have made a whopping $10.9 trillion in the year 2019 alone. In fact, Indian women could have been the third-highest earner followed by China and America as they, on average, spend close to six-hours per day for unpaid domestic labor.
The chief of research at UN Women, Shahra Razavi mentions, “If women stopped doing a lot of the work they do unpaid, then the whole economy would collapse”. Especially, in a developing economy like that of India’s, amidst the scarcity of facilities based on household appliances, the burden of daily chores disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders. Indeed, due to the gendered standards of both the economy and society, these works are devalued and dismissed as women’s natural responsibilities. Even when urban middle-class women are professionally involved outside the domestic space, they are expected to ‘double-work’ by looking after both the spaces. In certain cases, lower-class women substitute them as domestic helps to form the mass of the unorganized labor sector.
After certain relaxations of lockdown were introduced on the 4th of May in the non-containment zones of Indian cities, it caused a stirring over whether domestic-helps are to be allowed inside the gated complexes. The desperation of the residents to reappoint them despite the Residents Welfare Association’s (RWA) reservations on the government orders was remarkable. At the same time, it has indeed been a tough time for all the domestic-helps due to irregular flow of salaries, lack of accountability on the part of their employers as well as the overall scarcity to make the ends meet.
Perhaps, next time before yelling at your domestic help for taking extra leaves or even asking for a bonus, you may consider taking a pause to ‘thank’ her for ensuring the smooth sailing of your daily life. Or, you may even avoid throwing your everyday tantrums over the food served at the dinner table. In the end, all it takes to realize and respect the worth of domestic labor is to put oneself in the same shoes and take it with a pinch of salt.
What has been your experience during this unprecedented lockdown?