Why homemakers' labour still doesn't count

Imagine a company that depends entirely on one person. That person manages HR, balances the accounts, cooks the meals, teaches lessons, and plans every event, all without pay or a single day off. That person works 15 hours a day, seven days a week, yet work is invisible on the balance sheet—no rest, no pay, no promotion, just endless exhaustion that never ends. Yet society dismisses them as 'unemployed' who do 'nothing'. This is the reality of our 'homemakers.' They work without getting recognition.

A homemaker is someone who stays at home to ensure the household runs smoothly and that every family member's daily needs are met. This role is gendered in South Asian countries. Especially in Bangladesh, the job is overwhelmingly carried out by women and is commonly referred to as a 'housewife's' role.

"Cooking rice doesn't need brains," we often say so casually, as if cooking, managing a home, or raising children aren't real work but mere 'duties'. Yet the very tasks that earn no salary, without which life cannot function, are the ones society chooses to overlook the most.

Historians trace the origin of this role to the sexual division of labour that occurred during Europe's industrialisation in the 19th century. Women were paid significantly less than men for similar work. As men moved to cities for industrial jobs, women were left behind to manage households and take on domestic responsibilities.

Over time, this gendered division of labour was romanticised, and being a housewife to a wealthy man even became an aspiration. Publications like The Housewife's Friend and Ladies' Home Journal devoted entire issues to advising women on how to become better homemakers and keep their husbands happy.

In the 1960s, second-wave feminists like Betty Friedan began challenging the glorification of homemaking, arguing that it reinforced women's oppression and limited their independence. Then, in 1972, Italian working-class activists took the movement further by demanding wages for homemakers through the International Wages for Housework Campaign.

In 1999, Venezuela became the first country to constitutionally recognise the socio-economic value of housework and to guarantee social security benefits for homemakers.

In 2018, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that people worldwide perform 16.4 billion hours of unpaid care work each day. That's like 2 billion full-time workers, a quarter of the global population. If this work were paid even minimum wage, it would be worth $11 trillion or 9 per cent of the world's GDP, a considerable contribution that often goes unnoticed.

A 2024 study by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) shed light on the enormous yet invisible contribution of women to the country's economy. It is estimated that in 2021, women's unpaid household and caregiving work was worth around BDT 5.3 trillion, an amount equal to 14.8 per cent of Bangladesh's GDP. In sharp contrast, men's unpaid work made up just 2.8 per cent.

The study further revealed that women spend nearly seven times more time on unpaid domestic and caregiving activities than men, underscoring how much of women's labour remains unrecognised and uncompensated despite being essential to families and the nation's overall productivity. Bangladesh's national budget has pledged institutional recognition for women's unpaid and unacknowledged caregiving and household work. This landmark move acknowledges the immense economic value of the domestic labor traditionally performed by women. Work that has long remained invisible and uncompensated. 

Why do people argue that homemakers deserve a salary? At the most basic level, the demand stems from the need to recognise that the unpaid work homemakers do at home directly enables paid work outside the home. Their labour has real economic value and deserves fair compensation. Without it, homemakers remain financially dependent on others for basic needs, while society continues to dismiss their efforts as not being 'real work'.

There is a debate over providing state-funded salaries to homemakers, which can empower women within their households. The discourse is without such support, many remain financially dependent on their husbands or families, which leaves them more 'vulnerable' to 'exploitation.'

Despite these arguments, many people, including some feminists, oppose paying homemakers a salary. One common objection is that assigning an economic value to domestic work can feel reductive, since it's impossible to fully capture the ways care work supports a family's well-being. Another critique is that such a salary could make domestic labour seem like something a husband 'purchases' from his wife, reinforcing the traditional idea of men as providers and women as caregivers.

There are practical challenges in determining a fair salary and deciding who should pay it. Yet research shows that women do not stop performing the invisible work of caregiving and domestic labour at home, even when they take on paid jobs outside the house.

This means that, on average, women do far more combined paid and unpaid work than men. In this context, simply providing a salary for homemakers is a limited, stopgap measure rather than a comprehensive solution to the unequal burden of unpaid care work borne by women.

Feminist macroeconomists instead recommend a holistic "3R" approach that recognises the economic importance of unpaid care work: Recognise its value, Reduce the drudgery and time burden through better infrastructure and services, and Redistribute unpaid care work more equally across society.

Adopting this approach means tackling unpaid care work together as a society so it doesn't fall unfairly on women and so every woman can make her own choices without invisible burdens holding her back.

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