Dinesh Kamath's Editorial (Should husbands pay salary to housewives?) that was published in Newsband

Should husbands pay salary to housewives?

Is it possible to make it mandatory for men to share a certain percentage of their income with their wives, if the latter should stay at home and do household chores? Isn’t it necessary to financially empower women who stay at home? How much the housewife should be paid should be decided after considering every aspect of family relationships and all financial transactions taking place within. But is it possible to do such type of investigation?

The idea comes from proposals by Western feminists to monetise household labour. Making husbands pay their wives the wages that maids might be paid for domestic labour could be insulting to the housewives. In Western countries, the sheer impracticality of such a scheme has kept it out of statute books anywhere.

There can be a myriad jobs undertaken to keep a household running, some even performed disproportionately by men. The government would have to draw up a list and devise a payscale for each conceivable job. But is it possible for the government to ensure its enforcement by each family? Instead of coming up with such a law it would be worthwhile if the government ensured total female literacy, and enforced existing laws against rape and domestic violence.

But there are some people who believe that it is possible to bring into existence the law which forces husbands to pay salaries to housewives. For decades feminists have been demanding wages for household work. Women were always nurturers and homemakers, while men went out and earned a living. But there are women who do the same professional jobs as men, often earning more than them, and they still end up doing all the household work - cooking, cleaning, washing etc. There are cases where men have taken charge of household work while women went out to earn money. In that case will the law force the women to pay salary to their husbands?

However, by now acknowledging the need to monetise domestic work, the ministry of women and child development is doing the right thing. This has given birth to hot debate on the issue. One cannot deny that it's women's hard labour, a lot of it nothing but sheer drudgery, which ensures the smooth running of a household, enabling men to carry on with their engagements and interactions with the outside world. Besides, keeping a household is not just about washing clothes and cleaning dishes. It also involves raising children, which is mostly done by women. Hence many feel that it should be made mandatory to pay women for the routine household work that they do.