The struggle to count women’s labour, Pg7

Key Highlights:

• A 2023 UN report indicates women globally spend 2.8 more hours daily than men on unpaid care and domestic work.
• Bolivia's Constitution recognizes housework as an economic activity with social security benefits for housewives.
• Trinidad and Tobago's Counting Unremunerated Work Act (1996) mandates measurement and valuation of unpaid work, disaggregated by gender.
• In 2023, the Madras High Court ruled that wives performing household duties are entitled to an equal share in property.

Detailed Insights:

• Emotional and mental labor in sustaining relationships and household well-being remains largely unacknowledged and unrewarded.
• Feminist scholars argue that economic policies marginalize care work, prioritizing male-dominated "productive" labor and GDP growth.
• The focus on physical infrastructure over social infrastructure leads to underinvestment in childcare, elder care, and mental health services.
• Global legislation recognizing women’s labor is scattered; few countries have laws addressing unpaid care work or emotional labor.
• Argentina has enacted laws providing pension credits for domestic workers, acknowledging their contribution to raising children.
• A structural shift is needed where men actively participate in care responsibilities to prevent the disproportionate feminization of unpaid work.
• Revaluing labor requires recognizing emotional labor's critical role in sustaining households, communities, and economic systems.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Unpaid Care Work: Uncompensated activities like childcare, elder care, and housework, disproportionately done by women.
• Emotional Labor: The effort to manage emotions to fulfill job requirements, often invisible and unacknowledged.
• Gender Division of Labor: The societal assignment of different tasks and roles to men and women, often leading to inequalities.