Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Too much work, and for what?

This morning, I had reason to reflect on how many factors conspire to keep women from professional success. A health crisis in the family has kept a colleague from the office for a few days now with no end in sight within the week. She is conscientious and no doubt this is adding to her stress.

All women work, whether at home for no pay or outside for pay, and that their workload never diminishes is even a saying ("A woman's work is never done"). But when women go out to work for money (because why else would she want to, right?), nothing shifts at home. She retains primary responsibility for the household, for care duties and for the family's social and ritual obligations. When I was young, I used to despair about women who took leave for 'nombu' or for someone's naming ceremony. I don't so it still irritates me when it comes up but now I realise that this is part of that double burden.

In the absence of the joint family, with families being scattered and more women remaining single, care duties are not shared. In an  crisis, there may be absolutely no one else that a caregiver can call on even to sit with a patient while she pays the bill or gets medicine. If she is a midcareer or senior person, it would take an extraordinary organisation to adjust its priorities to her emergency and even then, they may not always have a choice. The expectation is that women would perform their duties excellently at home and outside.

What a huge burden and source of stress for the woman! Already raised in a society where she is taught to be her last priority, in a crisis, she is alone. Having taken leave for the crisis, she may not have the choice of taking leave to take care of herself.

Why then would women take on work in the public sphere? Why would they volunteer? Why would they do political work? Why would they contest elections?

When men make those choices, they are lauded for their public spirit, and the waves (of family members and their expectations) part to make room for the social activist or political leader. By and large, while men in political life serve society, an army of domestic supporters serve them. But who takes over care duties from women? This is one reason that those who advocate the greater inclusion of women in politics are also advocates for care work support, either through allowing budgetary allocations for it or setting up social support systems.

In India, the government and NGOs set up Self-Help Groups (SHGs) everywhere and we have high expectations of women in these groups, especially those with leadership potential or those who get elected to leadership roles. But these are women who often live in localities where there is no infrastructure so getting water or getting to use a shared toilet take time and energy (not to mention planning). They go to work after that. They run their homes, trying to make sure that their children go to school, eat well, do their homework and stay out of trouble. On top of all this, which is already too much responsibility, they are expected to attend SHG meetings on time, carry out the activities and deliver results. We do this in the name of empowerment but really, how unrealistic and inconsiderate. There have to be kinder roads to empowerment. We must find them.

Since the morning, what I have really been thinking about is the way in which we think about work. At work and in politics, our traditional way of assessing work, achievement and success is predicated on patriarchal household arrangements. A man goes out to work, focuses on the work, gets stuff done, and returns to a domestic sphere where one or many women have taken care of maintenance and care work, and everything is set up to support his work outside. Of course, this is in return for his outside earnings that pay for household expenses. The point here is that it is this arrangement that determines how we expect people to work and deliver.

Unless women get the same level of support at home, this is completely unrealistic. And cruel.

Today, many HR firms specialise in helping women find work, even after a long break, and in mentoring their start-ups. But even here, I hear leaders speak about how women must (not as in do, but should) balance home and work responsibilities. A management school leader proudly told me that he plainly advises young women MBA students that they must prepare to balance both responsibilities. Others talk about how family support is important--but in the sense of permission and not shared household work. Women are ridiculously grateful to men for any little support they get and a good man is still one who does or who will 'allow' his wife to work outside or to study.

When will this change? Really, when? Until it does, women are going to carry an unfairly large burden--for themselves, for their families and for society.

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