Unpaid Caregiving Economy: Building Feminist Solidarity for Women
When I was fourteen, I was often pitted against my six-year-old sister. “Look at her, how much she cares about her father”, they would remark as my sister would watch my father take off his shoes, pick them up and keep them in their designated place. She was applauded for her work and hailed as the ‘domestic princess’, and her actions were construed as an act of love towards our father, leading to approval and validation. My mother, previously, would fume every day at my father for leaving his shoes abandoned. So, even without being asked, my sister took on the role of alleviating my mother's grievance.
In those particular moments, I was not a favourable daughter. Nobody asked my sister to pick up the shoes, but everyone rewarded her for it. And invariably, without harmful intentions, as a family, we had set up a reward system; the more domesticated she was, the more my sister would be praised and loved.
As a Gender Studies student who has academically and socially observed the workings of the unpaid caregiving economy, and coming from South Asia where domestic responsibilities are shaped heavily by patriarchy, I have always been curious about the invisible labour that women provide.
What is the unpaid care economy? Work done to care for human survival, especially by women, is integral to the world economy. Claudia Goldin, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, shows how women's work often collides with expectations to manage a family, especially husbands and children. Her research proves that unpaid care work often influences the existing wage gap. Across the globe, an economist from South Asia, Ashwini Deshpande, is doing similar work, unpacking the survival of the world's fastest-growing economy that depends on the unpaid labour force that women become.
The foundation is set when we train 6-year-olds to look after men and brothers. “Daughters care more,” one of my Uncles would often say. Yes, because we are trained to do so. In our own mothers, we witness how the amount of unpaid caregiving work increases over time, and the rewards decrease. Parents often tend to romanticise the caretaking actions of young girls, but the expectation that young girls should pick up after their adult male members of the family can be seen as something that impacts their career opportunities and future income.
A BBC video on the way we play with our young children, showcases the different types of toys that we give to our young girls and to the boys. As expected, girls are often given toys that promote domesticity while boys tend to get more complex puzzles and mechanical games. As they age, parents tend to use more numbers with boys than they do with girls. Simone De Beauvoir’s work, furthered by Judith Butler’s research, points to how training to domesticate future women begins at their birth, if not before. But the interesting thing about the BBC’s video is that girls have been made to wear boys' clothes, and vice versa. A girl does not 'naturally’ gravitate toward domesticated toys; rather, she is sometimes pushed toward them by adults.
Our social setting shapes our psychological upbringing, nurturing girls from a young age to undertake caregiving responsibilities. Yet, parents are beginning to become conscious of how they are raising their daughters. The rise in the number of women who are pursuing education, being in the workforce and living a better life is an indication of the evolving society.
While the income wage gap has been eroding over the course of time, it still exists. According to Claudia Goldin, we can use visible markers to understand, in part, why the wage gap exists. “Observable factors that affect pay—such as education, job experience, hours of work, and so on—explain no more than 50 per cent of the wage gap” but there are other residual factors that we don't understand. These invisible markers contribute significantly to the wage gap, but what are they?
It is not just discrimination based on sex or the way the labour market is structured. Instead, it can be attributed to the demands of a woman in her personal life that contribute significantly to the existence of the wage gap.
The wage gap doesn’t always begin from the get-go, instead, it widens as age increases. Why? Because more caregiving responsibility is added onto the woman’s shoulders. Motherhood, especially, plays the biggest role in impacting the existing wage. For example, a study by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that a mother’s average monthly earnings fall by 42% five years after the birth of her first child. After women return from giving birth, their hours might change at work; they might need more flexibility due to personal obligations. Who gets to prioritise career over family? Or rather, who gets to sacrifice the joys of personal life as well?
Today, the dynamics have come a long way. Companies have started designing parental leave for both parents; men have begun to contribute significantly towards childcare and domestic responsibility. As more feminists come to power across institutions, there is a growing understanding of the importance of equitable distribution of responsibilities at home and outside.
There is no winner in a situation where both men and women, in a traditional heteronormative family structure, sacrifice either personal obligations or professional wins.
According to Goldin, an increase in the amount of money the government spends on child care, a household with equal responsibilities where both partners are able to prioritise their career and family, is important in narrowing the gender pay gap. A significant change in the corporate culture, where ‘greedy’ high-stress jobs are made less demanding but still retain their productivity to make space for both parents to pay attention to home.
A freer woman in a feminist set-up can be the happiest asset not just to the economy, but to her family and especially herself. We have to do what Goldin recommends, but we also have to fundamentally change ourselves to make space for women to thrive and be feminists in workplaces and at home. We need to pick up our own shoes because it is not cute to make your daughters pick them up for you.
