RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Invisible Work of Women Counts Too

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 9 2000 (IPS) - A huge number of women in Argentina work nearly eight hours a day, seven days a week, without receiving any wages at all – the so-called homemakers, who keep the home and their family’s clothes clean, cook and raise the children, and care for the elderly and the sick.

While many women will not be surprised to hear that estimate, organisations today are trying to translate invisible housework into hard data to shed light on the situation and trigger a debate on the need to recognise the value of such work.

But – they clarify – without falling into the trap of paying women to do such work, and further entrenching the stereotype of domestic duties as “women’s work.”

In this Southern Cone country – as in many other countries – it is so common for men not to share domestic responsibilities that women express their gratitude when their partners “help out” with housework or childcare.

Men, meanwhile, often refer to wages earned by their wives outside the home as “a little bit of help.”

The tasks are divvied up in a fixed manner, despite the massive entrance of women into the labour force in Argentina and their progress in education, to that point that they comprise a majority of university students and can boast better average academic achievement scores.

“My wife sells water filters to private homes to help me out a little,” Horacio Martínez told IPS. His wife, who had never before worked outside the home, turned out to be a good saleswoman. She earns more than her husband.

The data on housework emerged from a survey among women over the age of 14 carried out by the General Secretariat of the Union of Argentine Homemakers.

The study found that mothers exclusively responsible for domestic duties spent an average of seven hours and 20 minutes a day on those tasks.

Mothers with outside jobs were not free of the burden, but put in double workdays instead. According to the report, such women dedicate an average of four hours and 17 minutes a day to domestic responsibilities.

Thus, women working outside the home put in 11 and a half hours a day, which leaves little time for recreation, the study points out.

The report adds that women are frequently the first out of bed in the morning, in order to get things done before going to work. At noon they “shop for the household, at night they attend the family, and on the weekends they clean, wash and iron.”

María José Lubertino, the head of the Women’s Social and Political Institute, told IPS that in recent years an increase had been seen in the number of men participating in childcare, but not in the number of men sharing other household tasks like cleaning, washing and cooking.

That demonstrates “the enormous inequality between men and women in the distribution of responsibilities, even among professionals,” said Lubertino.

She added that when it came to childcare activities, men spent more time playing with the children than bathing or feeding them or attending school meetings.

Domestic duties are known worldwide as “unremunerated work,” although in recent years women’s groups have been trying to come up with hard data in order to highlight a routine phenomenon that lies at the basis of gender inequities.

A recent report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) points out that throughout the world, women dedicate two- thirds of their time to unremunerated activities, while men dedicate one-quarter of their time.

The UNDP study states that the market does not reward housework, childcare or care of the elderly, while it punishes women who take time from these activities to take part in remunerated work or in developing skills – by studying or training – that would allow them to join the labour force.

The patriarchal model of society, says UNDP, holds that women should work at home in “reproductive tasks” while men should engage in “productive activities,” generally outside the home.

But while “a large number of women have taken on remunerated work in the past few years, there has been no similar trend of men collaborating more at home,” said Marcela Rodríguez with the Vicente López Women’s Centre based in the province of Buenos Aires.

The study by the Union of Argentine Homemakers found that when domestic responsibilities are included, women produce 60 percent of the country’s goods and services, while men receive 61 percent of the remuneration.

Lubertino said that in Latin America, only Barbados has a plan to get housework factored into public accounts as a share of gross domestic product, in recognition of women’s major contribution to child-rearing and the care of the elderly and the sick.

But when it comes to discussions on how to resolve this source of inequality, a wide range of suggestions crop up in Argentina. The Union of Argentine Homemakers believes the State should pay a salary to housewives in order to grant their work status and help make it visible.

Neither Lubertino nor Rodríguez agree with that approach, however.

“That would stigmatise women in their domestic role, and I believe that our target must be getting household responsibilities and child-rearing duties to be shared,” said Lubertino.

Rodríguez, meanwhile, said such initiatives could turn into “a double-edged weapon,” because although “it is true that the lack of remuneration is a problem, if we pay homemakers, we will continue relegating women to the domestic sphere, and thus further entrench the stereotype of women as responsible for the home and the children.”

The two women’s activists prefer other alternatives, such as the development of social services by the State, like free daycare for the youngest, or special stipends for families with children.

Young women today believe things are changing, but slowly and with occasional setbacks. Newlyweds or couples living together without being married, in which both partners hold paying jobs, have been found to share household responsibilities in a more equal manner.

The UNDP report suggests that one way to neutralise gender inequities could be to reduce the length of men’s workdays in order to encourage them to take on a greater share of domestic duties.

But once the children arrive, things become even more complex. Men often work even more hours outside the home, while women tend to reduce their workdays to dedicate more time to their children.

“When I got married, she was a successful professional,” Alfredo Suárez, 52, told IPS. His wife, Pilar González, an educational psychologist, was 30 at the time. But with the arrival of their four children, she ended up abandoning her career.