The working woman’s lockdown: Doing Zoom conferences, cooking and cleaning at the same time

Among the many memes that have popped up during the coronavirus lockdown, several relate to the division of labour at home. Some follow the tired narrative of the wife as the tyrannical villain who dumps chores on the husband. The joke is meant to be in the incongruity of the setting – a miserable man washing a sink full of dirty dishes rather than being in his natural habitat, in front of a laptop or at the workplace.

But interestingly there are others which reflect women’s voices about how the lockdown has compounded their work. One shows a multi-handed goddess washing her hands, possibly for the nth time and swearing at the virus. It captures succinctly what many women are thinking. While the lockdown has been harsh to several demographics like daily wage labourers and elderly people, it has also created an exhausting routine for the woman of the house.

The division of labour at home has always been disproportionately tilted against women, especially in traditional societies. The last edition of a periodic global study by the UN called ‘World’s Women’ states that as of 2015, women in developing countries spend, on an average, 4 hours and 30 minutes per day on unpaid work and men 1 hour and 20 minutes. The report classifies unpaid work to include cooking, dishwashing, cleaning of a dwelling, laundry, ironing, gardening, caring for pets, buying groceries and care for dependents.

The lockdown situation has amplified such unpaid work for the working woman. For many professional women, ‘work from home’ means as many Zoom conferences and emails to attend to as the husband. But in addition, they need to ensure that children are gainfully occupied; complete cleaning chores in the absence of the domestic help who cannot enter the building; supply three meals and endless rounds of tea and snacks. In the background is the spectre of the coronavirus that requires checking if everyone is washing hands a thousand times. For those who live in cramped apartments or with elders suffering from chronic ailments or both, six weeks of this routine can seem like an eternity.

Smrithi, 35, and her husband, both software professionals in Hyderabad have a toddler at home. “I am going crazy. It can’t get tougher than this!” she says while admitting that she does most of the work. But she points out that since her husband is not used to doing domestic tasks he is slow in executing them. “I can finish the same job in lesser time, so I would rather do it myself,” she says.

Gitika, 49, an entrepreneur in Pune with two teenagers at home, says she has not had any time to herself post lockdown. She attributes the disconnect that Indian men and children have with housework to the constant availability of maids in middle class homes. Between maids and the mother, the kitchen and cleaning has always remained a woman’s domain.

In a recent video Paras, a popular figure on the social media app TikTok, urges men to share women’s work during this lockdown period and not strain them with constant demands. The women’s comments on this are instructive. “Aapne dil ki baat keh di” observe many while another writes wistfully “kisi ne toh samjha humein”.

Ironically, lower income women such as domestic maids find themselves with a lot more time though their stress is now the uncertain financial situation. Savitri in Noida, who is a cleaning lady in five homes in a posh gated community used to rush through the day because her informal baby sitting arrangement would stop at noon. Now she reluctantly acknowledges that she has time with her children but would rather get back to work since money has totally dried up.

With the lockdown the ‘me-time’ component of a working mother’s daily schedule shrinks alarmingly and threatens to affect her well-being, unless rescued by a more equal division of labour within the home. One meme urges wives to understand that ‘work from home’ means “ghar se kaam” not “ghar ka kaam”. Women working from home would say that cuts both ways!