What is a woman’s worth

“She’s just a housewife. She doesn’t work.”

This was what Ajunath Sindhu Vinayala would often hear from his father, whenever he introduced his wife. Ajunath, a 9^th grader from Thrissur, Kerala, was disturbed by this as he never saw his mother idle. And so, he painted a picture of his mother’s daily routine, from feeding chickens to milking the cow, hunting birds, going to market, tending the garden, cooking meals, sweeping the floor, drawing water from the well, doing laundry, giving the baby a bath, combing her daughter’s hair, and more.

Ajunath showed the painting to his teacher who then sent it to the state government office, where it got selected as the cover for the 2021 gender budget document. Unfortunately, Ajunath’s mother died in November 2020 due to ill-health, but the painting will live on as testament to the saying, “A woman’s work is never done.”

People generally equate the amount of money they get paid for work done as their worth. But a lot of real work is being done by women, unseen, unpaid, and many times, unappreciated, to make life easier for their families.

The OECD Development Centre defines unpaid care work as all unpaid services provided within a household for its members, including care of persons, housework and voluntary community work. These activities are considered work, because theoretically one could pay a third person to perform them.

Before the pandemic happened, I had a cleaning woman come every weekend, and a laundry woman come twice a week to take care of household chores. Many years ago, I enjoyed the luxury of having housemaids and yayas to take care of the house and the children while I worked building TeamAsia. As the years passed and the children grew older and went to school, we no longer needed yayas, but still we relied on live-out help for the cleaning and laundry. I enjoyed cooking and puttering out in the kitchen so meals were not a problem.

When lockdown happened and help could no longer come to the house, I found myself having to take care of the entire household, from cleaning and scrubbing the floors, to cooking, gardening and pet care, while having to figure out how to pivot our organization to the new normal. I was blessed to have Bea and Niccolo with me, and Bea took on laundry duties on top of managing the day-to-day business of TeamAsia, and keeping the team inspired and focused on navigating the new normal, albeit remotely.

In the early days of the lockdown, seniors were forbidden from going out of their homes, and so it fell on Niccolo’s shoulders to do the occasional foray out to get supplies and food for the house. It was a difficult adjustment for all of us, but I was happy when we were able to pick up my mother from Quiapo so she could stay with us. At least we didn’t have to worry about her safety being far away from us. Days began before the sun came up, and ended late into the night, as we juggled the twin responsibilities of the organization as well as the home. Our experience, I am sure, was being lived out in other homes.

Indeed, COVID-19 has dramatically increased the burden of unpaid care, the brunt of which is traditionally carried by women, even pre-pandemic. UN Women reports that on average, before the onset of COVID-19, women spent three times as many hours as men on unpaid domestic work and care work. This includes family responsibilities like caring for children and elderly parents, cooking and cleaning. At the August 21, 2020 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy (PPWE), APEC Chile reported that women dedicate an additional 33 hours per week to unpaid work since the lockdown.

While both men and women are doing more unpaid work at home, a UN Women Study on Unpaid Care and Domestic Work During COVID-19 shows that women do the lion’s share. Summarizing three regional reports on the Gender Impact of COVID-19, UN Women indicates that household work and domestic chores, like cooking, grocery shopping and cleaning to prevent infection are now being recognized as essential work. And while everyone is pitching at home, women and girls are bearing the heaviest burden, including cooking, cleaning, caring for children, teaching and playing with them, and providing affective emotional support for adult family members. Interestingly enough, when it comes to shopping for the family, taking care of pets, and assisting older, sick or disabled adults, men and women share the burden equitably.

In terms of total hours, the average time spent by women on childcare increased from 26 hours per week before the pandemic to an average of 31 hours now. Meanwhile, men now spend 24 hours a week on childcare compared to 20 hours before the pandemic. Thus, women work an extra 5.2 hours per week on average on childcare compared to the 3.5 extra hours that men do. At 30+ hours per week solely on childcare, this means women are already working the equivalent of a full-time job. Unpaid.

What is more alarming is that because of the economic downturn, more women are losing jobs than men, with unemployment rising from 5.5% to 7.7% among women vs. 4.7% to 7.1% among men, according to labor market data by UN Women and the International Labor Organization. By mid-year 2020, there were 1.7 times as many women as men outside the labor force, seeing more women shifting to full-time childcare.

Stop for a moment and think: how much would be the value of all this unpaid work? UN Women estimates the value of the over 16.4 billion hours spent on unpaid care work every day (roughly equal to to 2 billion people working 8 hours a day without pay) at 9% of global GDP or USD11 trillion. Staggering, isn’t it? Obviously, without the unpaid care and domestic work performed by women and girls, the world would not be able to function properly.

Given this, it now falls on society and governments to figure out how to value unpaid work, and compensate them. Perhaps as a start, let’s open our eyes and observe how much work goes into taking care of the home and the family, and start showing real appreciation to the women who do this out of love for us. And then, let’s do our part to lift some of the burden off their shoulders and to share the responsibilities of the home. Let’s take the cue from 14-year old Ajunath who saw his mother work unceasingly to take care of hearth and home, and immortalized this in his painting to prove her real worth.