UPSC Darpan

SocietyGS111 October 2026

Wages for housework: a new book links AIWC’s 1939 demand to today’s cash transfers

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The news

New Delhi. Reviewing Prabha Kotiswaran’s “Wages for Housework” (Oxford University Press) in The Indian Express, Shalina Susan Mathew notes that Goa began paying married women a monthly sum under Griha Aadhar nine years before Kamal Haasan’s January 2021 promise, without calling it a wage. Kotiswaran traces the idea past the 1972 Padua campaign of Selma James, Silvia Federici and Mariarosa Dalla Costa to the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), whose 1939 report and 1946 Indian Women’s Charter equated a homemaker’s labour with a factory wage; Constituent Assembly member Renuka Ray called a housewife as much a working woman. The book asks whether unconditional transfers in 12 States fulfil that demand, reviews about 300 judgments compensating a homemaker’s lost labour and notes ASHA, Anganwadi and midday-meal workers are classed as volunteers. Per a PIB release of 25 February 2025, women aged 15-59 spent 305 minutes a day on unpaid domestic work in 2024.

The chain in one line: AIWC equates housework with wages (1939) → Padua campaign (1972) → courts price homemakers’ work in compensation cases → States launch unconditional cash transfers → the question of recognising care as work

Static syllabus linkage

  1. Article 39(d) promises equal pay; care work is not yet ‘work’. Article 39(d), a Directive Principle, asks the State to secure equal pay for equal work for men and women. It assumes paid work: unpaid care sits outside GDP and labour law, which is why scheme workers called volunteers get no wage protection.
  2. The Time Use Survey measures what GDP misses. The National Statistics Office’s Time Use Survey records how people spend 24 hours. Per PIB, TUS 2024 found 81.5% of women and 27.1% of men aged six and above did unpaid domestic work, and women aged 15-59 spent 305 minutes a day on it, against 315 in 2019. SDG target 5.4 asks countries to recognise and value unpaid care.

Why UPSC loves this

  1. Women’s cash transfers are now a fiscal question. GS1 lists “Role of women” and GS2 “welfare schemes for vulnerable sections”; transfers to women in many States link both.

Prelims nuggets

  • Article 39(d) directs the State to secure equal pay for equal work for both men and women.
  • The Time Use Survey is conducted by the National Statistics Office under MoSPI; TUS 2024 followed the first in 2019.
  • SDG target 5.4 concerns recognising and valuing unpaid care and domestic work.

Analysis

  1. Lens — Short-term relief and long-term reform: a transfer pays the woman but may not free her time. A monthly sum gives a homemaker money of her own and some bargaining power at once. But, as the book concedes, it may also confirm that housework is her job. A thoughtful officer would pair transfers with what Kotiswaran’s “Care Manifesto” asks for: water, cooking gas, crèches and time-use data, which cut the hours themselves.
  2. Courts already price the work the State does not. When a homemaker dies or is injured, courts award her family compensation by assigning her notional income, and the book finds them widening what counts as her services and raising the amounts. The law thus already accepts that her work has a money value. Kotiswaran’s question is why that value is recognised only after death or injury.
  3. Calling care workers volunteers keeps costs low. ASHAs and Anganwadi workers run frontline health and nutrition, yet as volunteers receive honoraria, not wages. Recognising care at home sits oddly with not recognising it in the State’s own schemes.

Possible Mains question

Should unpaid domestic work be remunerated by the State? Comment in the light of women’s cash-transfer schemes in India. (10 marks, 150 words)

Model approach

  1. Directive — Comment. Give a reasoned opinion with both sides.
  2. Introduction — women spend 305 minutes a day on unpaid domestic work (TUS 2024). AIWC made the demand in 1939.
  3. Body — transfers recognise value and give women money. Value addition: Goa’s Griha Aadhar; homemaker compensation case law.
  4. Body — but cash alone may lock in the gendered division of labour. Diagram: two bars, women’s and men’s unpaid hours, with infrastructure arrows shrinking the women’s bar.
  5. Conclusion — pay and reduce the work. Transfers plus care infrastructure and fair wages for scheme workers.

Administrator's brainstorm

As Women and Child Development Secretary, how would you judge whether your State’s cash transfer works?

Beyond money reaching accounts, I would track women’s time use, girls’ school attendance and women’s paid employment against a baseline. If unpaid hours do not fall, I would put funds into water connections, gas refills and crèches. The measure is whether the woman’s work is counted, not only paid.