Aheli Moitra In yesterday’s editorial, Dr. Asangba Tzüdir raised a pertinent point. The revolution to build (gender) equality must start from the institution of the kitchen. In her seminal work, ‘Wages Against Housework,’ Silvia Federici (1975) notes how the subjugation of women begins from “common assumption” that “housework is not work.” With no wages attached to her services as the unpaid worker at home, most of the work women do remains invisible, disrespected and imposes ‘femininity’ on women who must work with a smile and without a question as the good housewife. This applies equally to women who are able to break loose from their households, find jobs/saving schemes and economic freedom but have to come back home to cook, clean, feed and raise men and their children. Those housewives, particularly mothers, who are unable to put themselves through the added exploitation of a job, remain poor and dependent on the wages of men thereby perpetuating their despondency. When women eventually venture into the formal economy, they are often just extensions of their housework—maids, nurses, teachers—stuck in the realm of making and serving tea at a village development board meeting while men make the decisions (that ignore the needs of women). Even in the public sphere she remains a housewife, not considered able to make decisions of public importance. Without a revolution at home—in the kitchen and the conjugal bed—women will never rise above their common subjugation. Silvia Federici and the campaign termed Wages for Housework proposes a solution—that housework should come with wages. After all, a woman spends 15-20 years of her life raising a person suitable to become a productive citizen of the state who then contributes to an economy that profits the nation and the corporate. If similar functions of the bureaucrat, teacher and doctor are paid for, why should the mother not be paid for her labour to raise a citizen or take care of the domestic front while the male worker takes part in public production? With wages, women can then choose to shed their servility and social baggage. “To say that we want money for housework is the first step towards refusing to do it, because the demand for a wage makes our work visible, which is the most indispensable condition to begin to struggle against it, both in its immediate aspect as housework and its more insidious character as femininity,” writes Federici. Young women who have been able to escape the household are often heard saying, “I am not housewife material” or “we choose what we want to be.” It is not in the luxury of escaping the “man’s world” or taking pride in exceptions where we affect change of the female collective but by engaging it—and to engage with it is to recognize our collective labour as housewives and mothers; to demand this work be seen, respected and valued, not just valourised. Without this we will continue to be at a loss to explain why we are disallowed to become public leaders at par with men. And without equality, a united struggle against powers-that-be will remain elusive.
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