Should there be wages for housework?

Question

Khushi Kumari Choudhary · Accepted Answer

The existence of wages for housework is a topic getting increased attention in today’s day and age in order to promote women empowerment and build an egalitarian society. The role of women in turning a house into a home is unquestioned. However, several challenges stand in the way of making this a reality. 
A primary concern regarding the provision of wages for household chores relates to deciding the financier. Assigning this responsibility to the husband could be viewed to be counterproductive to our objective as this would imply turning a personal relationship into a professional one which warrants a sense of financial accountability. This would further limit women from exploring their skillsets. Government provision would seem to be unreasonable as the funds could be deployed in better ways to achieve the same objective (for ex: giving subsidies to female owned businesses). Moreover, the definition of household work is very ambiguous and could vary from person to person owing to the emotional value of such chores. Additionally, we face the problem of a “missing market” since household chores represents products and services which face no demand or supply. Thus, quantifying these activities and attaching a monetary value is a paramount task. Moreover, this could further restrict women to the four walls of their home (Kumaraguru-2022).
However, the importance of this topic cannot be ignored. According to UN Women, household chores account for 9% of the global GDP in recent years. (UN women). Monetising household chores represents a step towards equality and recognises the significance of housework in the economy. This helps give women a sense of financial freedom and presents them with the opportunity of pursuing further interests. Thus, it is of no surprise that achieving this mammoth task would send a powerful message in favour of women worldwide. 
However, a compelling argument could be made for better usage of the time, effort and money involved in turning this notion into a reality. Instead, the government could modernize the labour laws to protect the interests of female employees by ensuring equal pay and having no tolerance towards female discrimination in the workplace. In addition to this, budgetary allocation towards creation of jobs for women by encouraging the growth of such industries will promote women empowerment in unimaginable ways. On an individual level, husbands should opt to and wives should demand for sharing of such responsibilities. As a society, more campaigns could be undertaken to improve awareness. Social media could be harnessed to provide unprecedented results. Thus, considering both sides of the story, women empowerment is the need of the hour, which however calls for a different and more refined solution (Kumaraguru-2022).

Should there be wages for housework?

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