Giving Homemakers their Just Value: Madras High Court’s Landmark Judgment

Nayantara Maitra Chakravarty

The Madras High Court’s recent judgement foregrounding the economic value of domestic work could well become the precedent for future judgements on the property rights of homemakers. This is an issue which I have given thought to since childhood. In fact my TED Talk at the age of 10 dealt with precisely this issue. ( See link below my article)

On 26^th of June 2023, the Madras High Court pronounced a landmark judgment, which is bound to be cited as a legal precedent, in matters related to the economic value of the work done by homemakers in India. The High Court was adjudicating a property dispute between a husband and a wife, where the husband had claimed full right over properties and jewellery bought by the wife, on the basis that he had financed the purchases. The High Court ruled that just because a husband went out of the house to earn money does not mean that he alone has rights over its proceeds.  

“When the husband and wife are treated as two wheels of a family cart, then the contribution made either by the husband by earning or the wife by serving and looking after the family and children, would be for the welfare of the family and both are entitled equally to whatever they earned by their joint effort. The proper presumption is that the beneficial interest belongs to them jointly. The property may be purchased either in the name of husband or wife alone, but nevertheless, it is purchased with the monies saved by their joint efforts.” ¹

This is a radical judicial intervention into a vexed space, which is highly debated, not just in India, but across the world. The High Court recognises that there is no explicit law available “to recognise the contribution by the wife either directly or indirectly.” However, 

“No law prevents the Judges from recognizing the contributions made by a wife facilitating her husband to purchase the property. In my view, if the acquisition of assets is made by joint contribution (directly or indirectly) of both spouses for the welfare of the family, certainly, both are entitled to equal share.” ²

The issue of domestic work and its economic value is a fundamental question in feminist theory. It is at the centre of the family as a juridical and ideological institution and it is also at the core of the economic category of household, which informs all economic policy-making. Even in countries where same-sex marriage is legally recognised, the predominant family unit consists of a husband, wife, and children. Although there is no legal obligation on the wife to look after the home, they are expected to assume the primary responsibility for undertaking domestic work within the household. On the other side, the husband is socially expected to be the primary breadwinner. 

These gender roles within the marital relationship are perpetually reproduced in public culture through the idea of the ‘good wife,’ one who is dutiful, loving, caring, and willing to sacrifice their own interests for the betterment of the family. Indeed, women become ‘wives’ as soon as they are born, from naming conventions that allude to domesticity, to being given ‘kitchenware’ and ‘child-care’ toys, and then later as they enter girlhood, being taught to cook, and clean and tend to the males of the house. I would argue that the wife-role is prior to the mother-role, not only chronologically (one must be a wife first before one ought to be a mother), but also in the power hierarchy within the family. The mother remains the dominant woman in the family, as long as her husband is alive, and she is the senior-most ‘wife’ in the family; after that the daughter-in-law takes over the reins. 

We can see this older Bollywood cinema, where the hero is asked by his mother to get ‘her’ a bahu (daughter-in-law), who will help her look after the home, now that she is getting old. This is followed by the demand for a grandchild. This stereotype might have disappeared from contemporary cinema, but it continues in modified forms in television serials. The echo of this basic ideology of domesticity can be found in even more liberal households, where the son is often asked to get married so that someone can take care of them, especially if they have long hours at work, and eat out too often. Doctors tending to male patients will often turn to their wives to give instructions as to their diet, as if automatically assuming that it is the wife who runs the kitchen. Similarly, women are expected to be responsible for their child’s homework and class performance, again based on the assumption that child-care is the wife’s job. 

These are constant affirmations of the wife role, which take place every day, everywhere. Even the state reproduces them despite there being no legal sanction for such roles. Most standard government forms ask for the husband’s or father’s name to establish a woman’s identity, often privileging the husband over the father. There are innumerable instances of judicial officers resorting to stereotypes when speaking of marital relationships. Thus, the wife role acquires the stamp of a quasi-legal status, even though it has no juridical locus. 

This weight of social, cultural, statutory, and quasi-legal construction of the wife-role, makes it inevitable that most domestic tasks are undertaken by women. The National Statistics Office Survey 2019 revealed that 92% of women in India participate in unpaid domestic work in the home, while only 27% of men did the same.³ The opposite is true when it comes to paid work outside the household. CMIE’s employment data for June 2023 shows that only 9.14% of Indian women in the working-age (15+ years) population participated in the labour force; in urban India it was even lower, at just 7.92%. ⁴ The data is clear – in an overwhelming majority of families in India, women do not go out of the home to earn a living. Instead, they look after the home and spend their day in domestic work and child care. 

In fact, without a wife taking care of the home, a husband simply cannot go out to work. In the absence of a wife, the husband would have to either do the domestic work themselves or pay for the services that a wife provides within the homestead. The High Court outlines this clearly in its judgment:

“In generality of marriages, the wife bears and rears children and minds the home. She thereby frees her husband for his economic activities. Since it is her performance of her function which enables the husband to perform his, she is in justice, entitled to share in its fruits. 

A wife, being a homemaker performs multi tasks, viz., as a Manager with managerial skills – planning, organising, budgeting, running, errands, etc.; as a Chef with culinary skills – preparing food items, designing menus and managing kitchen inventory; as a Home Doctor with health care skills – taking precautions and giving homemade medicines to the members of the family; as a Home Economist with financial skills – planning home budget, spending and saving, etc. Therefore, by performing these skills, a wife, makes the home as a comfortable environment and her contribution towards the family, and certainly it is not a valueless job, but it is a job doing for 24 hours without holidays, which cannot be less equated with that of the job an earning husband who works only for 8 hours.” ⁵

This is what makes the High Court’s judgment so important. From the point of view of the market, a worker gets market-determined remuneration for their labour. This wage, by its very nature, must be enough for the worker to return to work the next day. In other words, it must be enough to reproduce their labour power or ability to do labour. In all capitalist societies, wages are equal to the cost of all the goods (wage-goods) that are required by a worker to survive and return to the labour market.

In the Indian case, if a male worker had no family to look after their needs, they would need to buy the services from the market, either in the form of domestic help or directly as products (such as cooked food from restaurants). On the other hand, if he does have a family, then the wages must take into account the family’s cost of living. In the first case, the worker would have to spend a significant part of his wages on buying goods and services to sustain themselves. In the second case, a part of their wages would go to maintaining their wife and children, who will undertake unpaid domestic labour. From the point of view of the employer, the net effect is the same. 

However, when we look at it from within the institution of the family, the husband spends less on the living costs of the family, when the wife undertakes domestic labour, than he would if he had to buy the corresponding services from the market. Because the wife’s labour does not enter the sphere of exchange, it does not acquire a homogenous market value. It is entirely unpaid – not by the capitalist who employs the husband, but by the husband who gets the benefits of this labour. The absence of valuation ensures that the wife’s living costs are never the same as buying similar services in the market, since such services have acquired a value through the process of exchange. This allows the husband to save more from his wages, than he would, if he were unmarried. 

Household savings, therefore, are inflated by the difference between the cost of ‘maintaining’ a wife and the market-value of services which a wife provides. It is evident, therefore, that any assets that are bought with the help of such savings, must automatically belong as much to the wife as they do to the husband, who directly earned the money to buy those assets. Indeed, the court points out that a wife loses out monetarily by not only providing all domestic services (for 24 hours) free of cost but also because they sacrifice their own potential career. 

“If, on marriage, she (the wife) gives up her paid work in order to devote herself to caring for her husband and children, it is an unwarrantable hardship when in consequence she finds herself in the end with nothing she can call her own.” ⁶

The High Court’s judgment gives homemakers equal rights in the family’s property, even if they have not made any direct financial contribution to their purchase. The judgment recognises that all wages are ‘family wages,’ and therefore cannot legally belong to the wage-earner alone if they live within a family where their needs are taken care of for free. This seminal judgment is of immense consequence in defining the economic role of homemakers, and it is especially significant in societies like ours, where money equals power. 

Notes

1. Kannaian Naidu & Ors v Kamsala Amman @ Bhanumati & Ors, S.A. No.59 of 2016 and Cross Objection No.26 of 2017 (High Court of Madras, 21.06.2023), pp.39. https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/kannaian-naidu-v-kamsala-ammal-478279.pdf
2. Ibid, pp.41.
3. Radhakrishan, V, and N Singaravelu, ‘Data | 92% of Indian women take part in unpaid domestic work; only 27% men do.’ The Hindu, September 30, 2020. https://www.thehindu.com/data/92pc-indian-women-take-part-in-unpaid-domestic-work-only-27pc-men-do-so/article32729100.ece (accessed on July 2, 2023)
4. CMIE, ‘Labour Participation Rate: By Region and Gender’ Economic Outlook, Updated on 01 Jul 2023.
5. Op.Cit., pp. 37-8.
6. Ibid, pp. 39.