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SHARED RESPONSIBILITY How often does one find man in the kitchen?

In contemporary urban middle classes, career couples have become fairly common. The issue of how to balance both work and family responsibilities is however largely considered as a “women’s issue”. It is mothers, much more than the fathers, who are held responsible for finding the balance. One could argue that this simply reflects the reality of most women’s lives as they struggle whether to put careers on hold and go through guilt and anxiety over the time their jobs take away from their children. The question, however, is whether this situation is fair?

Although research shows fathers are spending more time with their children than they did 50 years ago, their involvement in care giving, especially with young children is still a fraction of that undertaken by mothers. There are interrelated reasons including policy shortcomings, work place culture, and the gender gap in earnings. But most significant is the traditional cultural view of mother as the care giver and of father as the provider.

Recent research has shown that unfavourable attitudes of the husband and his family towards the wife’s employment, and lack of sharing of domestic responsibilities are major contributors to stress among employed women. The notions that women’s earnings are secondary, that employment is an option for women, while it is assumed to be the man’s responsibility, that her primary role is that of care giving for the family, that she is somehow ‘deviant’ if she does not fulfil this basic requirement – are traditional attitudes found to impact adversely on women’s mental health.

In the West, the concept of ‘woman as co-provider’ has gained importance, and is associated with an egalitarian structure of the family. Such a view is yet to be accepted in our society. Further, the increasing trend of nuclear families in urban India, which gives greater independence to couples, but erodes the traditional support system from family members, especially for child care, household work, and illness means that it is not women alone who have to learn how to juggle work and family roles.

Emerging work spaces like the IT have adopted ‘family-friendly measures’ such as day-care, canteen, and even laundry facilities. Though critics describe adoption of such measures as an attempt to copy western organisational practices, and not a genuine commitment to gender sensitive measures, how much of relief from domestic tasks they provide to women and men who work in these centres, research is yet to tell.

Promotion of gender equality is one of the eight millennium development goals proposed by the U.N. and agreed by all the countries. A key responsibility of governments is to recognise that shared work and parental responsibilities between men and women can promote increased participation of women in public life.

Transforming child rearing into “shared work among social equals” needs changes at levels of policy, ideology and actual parental behaviour. Public educational efforts aimed at changing traditional views of motherhood and fatherhood, and promoting the importance of both maternal and paternal responsibility for child care could be a major contributor to greater equality in both the family and the workplace.

(SENIOR FELLOW, CENTRE FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STUDIES, HYDERABAD)

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