Household chores and care work done by women should not be typecast as being any different from the work performed by women in offices, as a first step towards mandating payments against that work and resultant economic independence for the women in question, according to Dr Rupali Basu, Managing Director & CEO, Woodlands Multispeciality Hospital Ltd. She was speaking at a Roundtable titled “Caring for Tomorrow: Addressing the Gender Gaps in Care Work” organised by FICCI FLO on the occasion of Women’s Day. “To me, it’s not only the salaried woman who is a “working woman”. A homemaker is also a working woman. She toils no less. And this work should definitely be paid for, because, at the end of the day, the gap between being powerless and being empowered can be bridged only by financial independence,” Dr Basu, said in her opening remarks at the Roundtable in which the other participants included Ms Sudha Shivkumar, President FLO, Ms Vandana Yadav, IAS, Principal Secretary Industry, Commerce & Enterprises Department, and Mr Vivek Gupta, Editor, Sanmarg. Dr Basu said, the wages can come from the government but that is not an ideal situation because it is the tax-payer’s money. Rather the woman’s family, who are a direct beneficiary of her work, should pay her a part of its earnings.
“The unpaid domestic work done by women in India is 7.2% of India’s GDP. It is high time forums like this spread awareness about this issue through discourse, which ideally should lead to legislation securing the financial rights of these women,” Dr Basu signed off to a huge round of applause. Later in the day, in a panel discussion organised by Young Indians of CII titled “Women in a Man’s World”, Dr Basu again batted for the cause of recognition of “care work” done by women in monetary terms and hailed government income support schemes for women in various states of India, including Bengal, for recognising and raising awareness about unpaid domestic work. The panel included actor Ms Nusrat Jahan, author and women’s rights activist Jael Silliman, and Kolkata Centre for Creativity CEO Richa Agarwal.
