Nandita a 28 year old scientist , works in in a research organisation in Bangalore. She is married and has a kid. She wakes up early in the morning to do all the household work so that she can reach her office on time. At office, she work hard sans break, so that she can proof her competence.
After reaching home, again she gets engage with managing house chores and child care. On weekends, Nandita has to work extra at home so that she can reduce domestic work pressure on working days.
It is not the same for her husband. Nandita’s husband provide an helping hand in domestic work but never consider it as his work.
Women work twice as hard as men at work place to prove herself. At home, women handle maximum work irrespective of her profession. Women whether she is a doctor, engineer, pilot, journalist, scientist , or corporate CEO – one thing is common. All of them spend considerable amount of their time manging the house.
A research conducted by a professor of IIM Ahmedabad suggests that even wage earning women spend twice the amount of time on unpaid domestic work in comparison to wage earning men.
Statistics shows that 75 per cent of unpaid work is done by women who spend between three to six hours per day compared to men’s average to two hours.
This imbalance starts at an early age. Girls as young as five do significantly more household chores then their brothers and it increases as they get older.
Also wealthier couples who pay for domestic help, the remaining unpaid work is done by the women. Women have increasingly joined the paid labour force but men has not matched this shift in their unpaid work.
Women have simply increased their total work time. Many studies have showed that women do the majority of unpaid work irrespective of the proportion of income they bring in. It is also noticed that even when men do unpaid work, it Is not doing routine house work but more enjoyable activities like child care.
Statistics also suggested that it is also rare for men to take on the more personal messy , emotionally draining aspects of elder care work. Female help with bathing dressing using the toilet.
Statistics found that men enjoy more spare time per day to rest than their female counterparts. Also a study found that the little leisure time that women have is more fractured and combined with other task than man.
Every citizen of our country take forever pride in calling ourself a free society. We are gifted with a constitution which assures gender equality. Can we really say, we practice gender equality when women who constitute when 50 per cent of the population of our country do 75 per cent of unpaid work. Moreover, when a women breaks the glass ceiling and enter male bastion professions, she has struggle to prove her calibre. But, she is expected to take care of the house flawlessly irrespective of her work pressure.
It may sound strange. But, as per a recent research, women in the working age category spend 7.2 hours on unpaid domestic work. Statistics study has found that female scientist do 54 per cent of cooking cleaning and laundry.
We can claim of gender equality only when men shift to unpaid work in the same proportion as women.
