2 years, 1 month ago-
Only, if we had to pay women for doing household work, why don’t we keep a maid instead? Here, one must acknowledge that it could be a choice of a woman to do household work, and paying her could be disrespecting her ideas. It is quite sensible to note that a woman does not strive to get paid for any household work. However, she wants love, care, and respect from her family members, especially her husband. After all, everything is not about money in this world. The people who say money buys happiness, the situation does not hold still considering any female who does household work.
A wife’s happiness revolves around her family and she always wishes for their growth and development in life. However, if one really wants to do something for the females in the household, then saying thank you could be a beautiful small gesture for the tasks they do. Secondly, if you would understand their stress and their effort to make everything perfect, you can show them love and care from the bottom of your heart.
A further gesture of making them happy could be helping females in their chores because balance is what keeps home happy. Whether you are her child or her partner, a small gesture of working alongside could be the best moment of happiness.
The work of managing households is as noble as God’s work of managing the universe, where the only difference is we are not God, though women are often seen doing miracles for their universe – their family.
From the very inception of the evolution of mankind, in the very foundation of human civilization Women have always been the experts of the life skills of household work. It seems to be an unsaid kind of MoU between Men & Women in the ancient times that unless wanting it otherwise the household will be managed by women of the house and other work which are to be done to earn living will be done by men of the house. Also the earnings, be it money or barter are always paid for the exchange of Goods & Services outside the house and not within the families. The foremost satisfaction of any work done, has always been some kind of consideration in any form be it moral or monetary.
Gradually over the time these understandings between the men & women have unknowingly turned into their sole obligations, without any consideration of one other’s willingness. As understood from the well-known profound theories of businesses managing resources is equally important to acquiring them, since no system can run in harmony without a good manager to manage it. And the same applies to households. Also apparently women’s expertise of managing households is seen as, as common as having a cup of tea which ironically is not everyone’s cup of tea. Which makes women feel unconsidered for their work in very obvious way.
Infact every work done by women to manage household has consideration or reward for it own when those are performed for anyone who is not family. For example, chefs,
Therefore it is undoubtedly, not at all wrong to say that women should be paid for household work may be not monetarily , but with due acknowledgement, gratitude, respect.Women don’t do any sort of work and tasks to get paid in exchange for work done. She works for each family member and for anyone who needs help, be it friends, neighbors, colleagues, or family members.
Women work constantly all day, all time and till her last breath, she never has a holiday nor she gets any paid leaves for household work, but still works each time whether she is sick also. Work done at house can’t we get paid and I don’t think it would be accepted by any women because they don’t work at house to get paid, treat them with love and respect and give them equality in everything and that’s what will really make them happy.
Women actually are creators and managers of house and the whole family because there is no single thing that women can’t do, she wakes up before each family member and starts her household chores and thus her work ends when she sleeps at night after everyone sleeps, this is women and the work done by them for family and house are infinite and they cant be paid in terms of fee or salary if it can really be paid then it should be by way of Respect, Equality, Love, and treat her the Best!!!For ages women have been handed the responsibility of ‘maintaining the house’ which involves cleaning, organising and care-giving. Even today, it is largely a woman’s task irrespective of whether she has a career. What separates domestic chores from any other work is their seemingly unending nature. Beauvoir gives a succinct rendition of household work. She compares the housewife’s ordeal to that of Sisyphus who is condemned to roll a rock up a mountain only for it to roll back down each time. In The Second Sex, Beauvoir writes, ‘…the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present…’ The tedium of domestic chores is often uninspiring and dull. Yet, women do it every day.
The value of this herculean task is, in most households, so easily discounted and ungratefully brushed aside by family members. Children whose mothers are homemakers often describe them to be ‘staying at home’ unlike their fathers who ‘go to work’. UN Women states that unpaid care and domestic work is valued to be 10 and 39 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product and that it can contribute more to economies than manufacturing or transport sectors.
While paying women for housework brings recognition, at least on a basic level, arriving at a close enough monetary value is problematic. How exactly are we to evaluate the worth of care-giving? Imputing based on prevalent market values is a possible method but that discounts the emotional investment of women. Nevertheless, any amount of monetary compensation would not be sufficient and would only demean the intent of care-giving. Besides, the nature and amount of household work varies across social class. There also remains the problem of working hours. Unlike formal working conditions, women do not have specific working hours for which wages can be accorded.
Perhaps the greatest risk of paying women wages is solidifying household work as a woman’s job. The provision of wages will only increase the ingratitude meted towards the work and women would be taxed physically and emotionally. The excessive time invested here would hamper women’s chances of having a proper career. The concept of sharing household chores would become redundant.
The only way to recognise as well as alleviate the burden of household work is to promote sharing. While providing wages is seen as bestowing financial independence to homemakers, sharing chores would enable them to have a salaried career that suits their unique skills and talent.
Kamal Haasan recently proclaimed his political commitment to pay for domestic work via his political party Makkal Neethi Manram. While there are many people who claim that such a move would contribute to making women’s unpaid work visible and eventually help to improve the worth of unpaid work and homework, many others believe it will offend traditional family values. The answer of actor Kangana Ranaut resulted in a series of commentaries that culminated in disputes about the value of women being reduced when paid for their natural work. The ILO defines unpaid work as unpaid labor doing to maintain the health and well-being of other people in a household or in the community. In India, women spend about 9 times the amount of time men spend on unpaid care. The gender imbalance is, in fact, 297 minutes a day compared with 31 minutes a day. The difference between men and women is the same. Sweden, which ranks first on the Gender Equality Index of the European Union, provided national subsidies for work in 2007 (cleaning, laundry, and ironing). Studies show that, 13 years later, the subsidies are spent over hours of earned income (approximately $2000 more annually than the subsidies in the same class). The working conditions of domestic employees also seem to be improved by institutionalizing adequate countries and working conditions for them. But many views argue that home subsidies are the means to tackle the parity of household tasks, with critics calling them socialism for the rich. Not only is it recognized as the unpaid job of women at home, but also the most fundamental question as to why domestic employment is regarded as women’s domain. All of them celebrate “homely brides,” nice housewives who take good care of their family, from matrimonial advertising to television, from movies to the neighborhood rumor mills. Girls are “trained” in marriage historically by being taught cooking from an early age. Geography has been covered by the term “padhke kya karogi, chulha chauka hi to karna hai” (why study when the stove is to be managed). Until a number of reasons exist to ensure women stay within the household unless the sexist identification of domestic work with women is called out and put into question. It will not impact the argument of paying it or not.
They should not be paid because this will be an insult to their emotions and love. Our mothers, sisters etc. don’t do household chores to get paid, they do these works out of love and love is immeasurable in terms of money.
Women work all day long to serve their families and fulfil their responsibilities. But she doesn’t get any recognition for this because people have a mindset that females are meant to do household chores. Though these works should be regarded as every family members duty sadly it is not! She sacrifices her choices, sleep etc. and no one can pay back for sacrifices. We should take care that maids be there for assistance so that her work becomes easier. Automation should be preferred for eg. Washing Machines, Automatic Irons can make work effortless.
I think all they need is not your penny but your concern when she is not feeling good, your help when she needs a helping hand, your understanding and support to lay back on and never say that she’s been idle all day despite doing chores. It’s because of her, we can work outside at offices the entire day
because we know that there is someone who’ll take care of our lunch, dinner, clothes and whatnot. And still, if you say that they do nothing then it’s disgusting. So we should pay her with Respect, Love & Care.Should women be paid for doing their own household work? Well, that would be nothing more than an insult for them. Our mothers do not perform all the household chores so that they could get money in return for it. They do not expect us to pay them, what they actually expect is our love and affection. Appreciating their efforts and giving them affection is the only way we can repay them for all the work they do for us.
Paying women for the household chores may further lead to this kind of work being stereotyped to women. This would further the gap between men and women. Rather than paying women we should encourage equal shares in household works, along with equal shares in the family finances. They must be helped in the household chores and must be equally encouraged to follow what they love.
We all know that household work done by women is barely acknowledged, we might occasionally applaud them for being selfless and all, but for the most part it is neglected. Why is it so? There might be two reasons for if. First, because it’s unpaid, and second, because of the inherent misogyny in people’s minds.
So coming to the first possible reason: the household work done by women is obviously unpaid. But that makes you wonder, should they be paid for it? The answer is quite complex to this question. On one hand, it’s quite hard to place a value on something as important as daily household work, and on the other hand it also creates the dilemma of who will pay them. And it’s not just about money we’re talking here, it’s women’s independence, because obviously financial freedom is very important for every individual. And just because a woman is involved in the household work, it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t deserve financial freedom.
Of course, one can say that the husband is earning money and his money is hers as well, but we don’t live in an ideal society where marital relations are so good, our current society homes not only many abusive marriages but also life threatening ones. So in such a scenario women getting paid for household work seems like a necessity rather than an option. Therefore, this is a very complex topic and we need a more mainstream and nuanced discussion on it.
Should women be paid for household work? It’s complex but the easy answer is NO.
First of all, if a woman has chosen to be a homemaker, then it will be a humiliation for her. If a woman is doing household work without being forced then obviously it will hurt her and it will be very stupid to put a price tag on the efforts and love with which a woman takes care of her family and household. No money can justify the number of effort that a woman has put into her family and household. Secondly, if a woman is paid to do household work, then paying her may lead to the idea that women belong to this work only and cannot work outside. Giving rise to sexism and gender inequality. If women are paid to be independent, it will take a turn and lead to confining them within their households, also, stereotyping the role to only women. Paying for household work may lead to many women having no aspirations in their life as their lives are reduced to only getting married and then working in the home and being paid for it. Women themselves will consider their sole roles in society as homemakers as that is what society exactly wants. So, women should not be paid for household work instead they should be acknowledged, appreciated, and equal shares in household work should be promoted. This will be a step in smashing the stigma associated with certain gender roles.
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