How would you feel if you worked a full time job but did not get paid for your work?
In India, this is a reality for over 16 crore women. In 2023, an economic report by the State Bank of India found that on average, Indian women spend just over 7 hours daily doing unpaid domestic work, accounting for almost 22.7 lakh crore Rupees or 7.5% of India’s GDP. These numbers shed light on the serious economic repercussions of the unpaid nature of women’s work — affecting their autonomy, well-being, and ability to exercise the full extent of their rights. Despite a Supreme Court order holding that "the value of a woman’s work at home is no less than that of someone who brings a salary from office" recently, nothing has changed for women in India.
‘Mai Ni Meriye’ — literally meaning ‘mother mine’ — is a new project by Aashna Singh and Farheen Fatima that looks at the ‘labour of love’, commonly described as ‘housework’ or ‘domestic work’, most traditionally executed by women through a photobook and a 20-minute short film. Historically, this work is perceived as naturally ‘feminine’ which encourages a false biological destiny for women in which appreciation or ‘love’ — rather than wages or money — is meant to serve as its own reward for the work.
However, ‘Mai Ni Meriye’ looks at this ‘feminine’ housework as more than just housework. Through quotes and images from interviews with 19 women across Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, as well as archival photographs capturing the everyday lives of women, Aashna and Farheen argue that this ‘housework’ is the unwaged servicing of waged workers emotionally, physically, mentally, and sexually; that without this work, no other work would be possible, and it should be formally recognized.
Inspired by the International Wages for Housework movement started by feminist activists in the 1970s, the project seeks to understand housework from women at the grassroots level and aims to humanise the subject. The larger goal of the ‘Mai Ni Meriye’ project is to galvanise interest in the ‘labour of love’ from small village discussions over tea to mainstream platforms with influential voices — all in service of a new perspective on women and housework.
Women's work never ends. There is always something, as they do work, more work gets created.Pooja Thapa, Jogiwara Village, Dharamshala
As I turned over the pages of the digital photobook and came across the quote above, I couldn’t help but think about the following lines from Caroline Criado Pérez’s ‘Invisible Women’ that echoes it: “Women have always worked. They have worked unpaid, underpaid, underappreciated, and invisibly, but they have always worked. (...) Women’s work, paid and unpaid, is the backbone of our society and our economy. It’s about time we started valuing it.”
It’s true. It is about time we started valuing the essential but unpaid work women do, especially in patriarchal societies like in India where it is taken for granted. It is about time we recognised that all work is made possible by women’s work and compensate them fairly for it. Projects like ‘Mai Ni Meriye’ are only a small step towards that goal — but it is the right step.
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