The 28th Foreign Correspondent Report

Nobody Cares to Pay Women for Care Work in Pakistan
Jawaria KASHIF (Pakistan)Though it is essential for advancing humancapabilities, care work is often taken for granted andundervalued because it is non-paid. It also
contributes to economic living standards and social
well-being, thus enabling individuals to engage inpaid work. However, unlike paid work, care work is
not assigned a monetary value in the national
economy of Pakistan. In the Human Development
Report 2016 of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), the ranking of Pakistan on theHuman Development Index (HDI) is 147th in theworld.
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics conducted a national large-scale time-use survey using
a time diary in 2007. This survey was the 1st survey of its kind. It gathered data about
unpaid child rearing, nursing care and other household labor comparing differences
between women and men. In March 2018, Data2X released a new report Invisible(“Invisible No More? A Methodology and Policy Review of How Time Use Surveys Measure
Unpaid Work”). According to the report, unpaid household and care work performed bywomen has risen in prominence as a major challenge in official statistics.
The first words a Pakistani husband says to his wife on his return home after work
are often as follows: “What did you do the whole day except for resting?” Similarly, aquestion which is repeatedly asked about a woman is like this: “Does she work, or is she
simply a housewife?” From these two examples, the collective mindset of Pakistani society
is exposed. The irony lies in the fact that society at large and policymakers in particular
do not recognize the value of care work.
If a woman or housewife does not complete everyday unappreciated chores such as
cooking, cleaning, caring for children, the ill, or the elderly, and many more other tasks
with responsibility, then someone must be hired instead of her to perform such householdtasks, while she does it totally free of charge. This fact is also gloomy in that people areready to pay a servant but not to their mother, wife, sister or daughter for the same
household chores.
In Pakistan, women who stay at home to complete household chores are not considered
as working women. People only value work which gets remuneration in return. However,looking after the home and family is the toughest work ever. If Pakistani mothers, wives,sisters, daughters, and daughters-in-law were paid for the care work, just imagine what
their bank balances would be like.
The lives of Pakistani rural women are more problematic than those of urban women
because rural women milk cows, clean barns, bring firewood, fetch water, cook, wash
clothes, care for family, among other household duties.
Another dilemma of Pakistani society is discourteous attitudes towards working
women. Family members including in-laws and a husband of a working woman expect her
to perform household chores along with her job. They consider her as a super woman.

The 28th Foreign Correspondent Report
Pakistani men do not share the load of household chores with their women. They thinkthat their work is done by providing financial support to the family and they put otherwork burden on their women.
One drawback of men’s not sharing household responsibilities with their women isthat most of highly educated women in Pakistan waste their talent by staying at home
due to the housework burden. If men shared their work burden, the women might be able
to build their careers.
The working hours of paid jobs in Pakistan are mostly from 9 am to 5 pm with 1 or 2holidays. Whereas, the women who are carrying out household tasks can’t enjoy holidays.
They work for 24 hours. There is no difference between day and night for them. For
example, a mother cares and nurtures her child the whole day. She attends the child evenat night and cannot sleep if the child is crying. Meanwhile, the father sleeps the wholenight because he is the breadwinner and has to go to work in the morning, and therefore
his rest is mandatory and no one is allowed to disturb him.

It is high time to break the gender stereotypes
in Pakistani society. Mechanisms must be made bypolicymakers to educate men to share householdchores with women, in order to lessen the burdenof women and to provide them a comfortableenvironment and suitable place in the society.
Women are the axis around which the wholesociety revolves, and thus their work must berecognized and their contribution to the survival ofa family must not be forgotten.

The 28th Foreign Correspondent Report