Even if a wife doesn’t earn, she contributes to the household. The Delhi high court’s recognition of the role of homemakers, can only be welcomed. Hearing a case of maintenance by an estranged wife, justice Swarana Kanta Sharma said just because the wife wasn’t employed didn’t mean she was idle.

“Running a household, taking care of children, supporting the family, and adjusting one’s life around the career and transfers of the earning spouse are all forms of work,” justice Sharma noted. “These tasks are unpaid and often unrecognized…yet they form the invisible framework that keeps many families going.”

Justice Sharma’s words would be sweet music to the ears of feminists who have for years insisted that the activities listed by the Delhi high court do, in fact, constitute ‘work’. Feminist economists point out that the business of unpaid care work—cooking, cleaning, caring for children, the elderly, the sick—disproportionately falls on women, whether they are employed or not.

We have the data that tells us just how much. In 2024, the government’s Time Use Survey found, women spent 289 minutes a day providing unpaid household services plus another 137 minutes a day on caregiving activities. For men it was 88 minutes for housework plus 75 minutes for caregiving.

It’s this massive time gap that explains the discrepancy in paid employment. Put simply, the more time a woman spends on unpaid work inside the house, the less time she has for paid work outside it.

Time use for 2024 shows that 75% of men aged between 15 and 59 were in paid employment whereas only 25% of women in the same age group participated in paid work.

Unpaid care work is not only seen as a woman’s responsibility, it is often glorified in the popular culture—“maa ke haath ka khana” (a meal cooked by a mother’s hand) and the like.

B remembers when her mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. Right until her death, she personally cared for her even though the family could afford a nurse. But her husband didn’t want a stranger handling his mother. He wanted his wife to do that job.

S went on maternity leave after the birth of her first daughter. But when the time came to return to work, she wavered. Sure, her husband chipped in. And she had reliable help at home, but somehow she couldn’t just go back to the long hours in the office. She quit. Does she have regrets? Sometimes, she shrugs. But takes satisfaction in the fact that her daughter is doing well in her career.

The motherhood penalty comes at a cost. Globally, mothers of children below the age of five have at 47.6%, the lowest employment rate, compared with 87.9% for fathers and 54.4% for women with no children, found a 2018 study of 90 countries by the International Labour Organisation.

Does care work have an economic value? A 2024 report........

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