India: Who owns a woman’s labour? In Bombay High Court order, a troubling answer

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/woman-labour-bombay-high-court-judgment-8236938/

Who owns a woman’s labour? In Bombay High Court order, a troubling answer

The court’s remarks in a domestic violence case reflect the wider social expectation that if a woman consents once to marriage, she gives blanket consent to a lifetime of housework

Written by Manjima Bhattacharjya

Updated: November 1, 2022 9:20:51 am

A recent judgment by a Bombay High court bench seems to uphold this kind of shaming of women for refusing to submit to the demands of housework and care work, or wanting to take charge of their own labour. (Express Archive)

The only thing you know when you are going to get married is that your life is now going to change.

In some cases, you might imagine that you will now be free. You can sit behind a man, riding pillion on a bike and rev around the city with more freedom than you had as an unmarried girl. You can go out for ice cream — at night! — with your newly-minted husband without being scolded, surveilled or suspected of betraying family honour. But you also know that awaiting you on the other side is a lifetime of drudgery and housework. Because that is the unspoken job description of a “married woman”.

In a 2018 study in West Bengal by scholars Samita Sen, Anindita Ghosh and their team at Jadavpur University, women who were interviewed in the South 24 Parganas area had only one criterion for who they wanted as brides for their sons: “Someone who can work”. One heard of girls who were sent back to natal homes for not being strong enough for the grind of household work and farm labour. Poor families and rural economies survive on women’s labour inside and outside the home. The study found that early marriages of adolescent girls were actually a response to the demand for female labour at home and in the fields. It validated a long-standing feminist claim: That marriage is the “mode of recruitment” for women’s domestic labour.

Women and girls are socialised to work in their natal homes too, but this study and several others have found that the burden of work rises disproportionately in marital homes. In Rajasthan, for instance, a 2019 study by community-based organisation Vikalp and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences found that amongst girls married before the age of 18 years, more chores and harder tasks were added to their list of duties in the marital home. What was striking was that the marital family felt entitled to the labour of the girl as soon as the engagement took place, immediately staking claims over her labouring capacity. In a poignant passage, the researchers write: “The young brides told the interviewers that they could not stop working even when they were unwell and that they received little help from family members in the marital home.” There are no sick leaves in this job.

Perhaps this lack of space to negotiate around housework is because of how closely this is tied to being the “good wife”. A “bad wife” is invariably the one who sleeps late or takes afternoon naps, does not do housework, and is “lazy”. There are many social rewards for being a good wife and as many punishments for being a bad wife. A participant in a 2016 study (on young women’s mental health) by Delhi-based feminist health organisation Sama said, “If we sit idle even for two minutes, our mothers-in-law will ask us to work. We have to work here because we are the daughters-in-law of the house.” And “bahus” or daughters-in-law were, by definition, expected to be working non-stop. Any slacking off was attributed to their poor upbringing and became an issue of loss of honour in their natal home. A participant who had refused to pick up dung soon after her marriage said, “My father-in-law complained to my father. My father apologised to my father-in-law and told me that I had brought shame to the family.” She cried with the humiliation and realised she could never refuse to do anything asked of her again. The study found that such humiliation deeply affected women’s self-esteem and had serious impacts on their mental health.

A recent judgment by a Bombay High court bench seems to uphold this kind of shaming of women for refusing to submit to the demands of housework and care work, or wanting to take charge of their own labour. Justice Vibha V Kankanwadi and Justice Rajesh S Patil quashed a domestic violence complaint from a woman who alleged (among other complaints) that she had been treated like a maid by her husband and in-laws one month into her marriage. The bench observed, “If a married lady is asked to do household work definitely for the purpose of the family, it cannot be said that it is like a maid servant.” They added, “If she had no wish to do her household activities, then she ought to have told it either prior to the marriage so that the bridegroom can rethink about the marriage itself or if it is after marriage, then such a problem ought to have been sorted out earlier”.

Even in the eyes of the law, domestic labour is intrinsic to the logic of marriage. The callous use of terms like “maid servant” aside, the judgment firstly seems to legitimise a fundamentally unequal division of labour. What is the problem with wives being expected to do housework? The fact is that housework has nothing to do with the reproductive organs and therefore can be done by a person of any gender. But it continues to be a gendered task, invisible, unacknowledged, and undervalued, done worldwide primarily by women with damaging physical and mental health consequences. Secondly, it suggests that if you consent once to marriage, you give blanket consent to a lifetime of housework — a little bit like slavery, wouldn’t you say? Not only do marital families feel entitled to a women’s labour, but apparently the courts feel the same way. Seen this way, marriage is not a crucible for love, romance, and dreams, but an unequal arrangement in which everyone but the woman can stake a claim on her labour.

The author is a researcher and writer based in Mumbai