Will the employer class finally learn to value the hired help who sustain their lifestyles? Will men come to terms with the invisible (and fraught) gendered nature of housework? Will humility and respect replace normative class and caste entitlements? And will the vast casualized and feminized work force of Indian domestic workers be in a position to negotiate robust social protections for themselves? These questions are relevant not only for the Indian setting but across the world where women disproportionately shoulder the burden of housework and in countries where hired help is readily available. (Source: Times of India, April 11 th, 2020.) Photo 3: Indian Male actors, Bohra and Bijlani urging the public to help their wives.
The bashful display of housework being performed by some men in their attempt to ‘save’ “their” women has also been eye-catching and revealing. We are witnessing a great deal of complaining and angst by employers. Photos 1 & 2: The gruelling everyday tasks of hired help – A foreign national employers’ instructions. This has thrown resourceful people of balance conversations around the everyday dependence on hired help who perform an enormity of tasks are proliferating on social media. Self-isolation rules are compelling the employer class to cook, clean, dust and care for multiple family members. In the midst of the pandemic, Indian and foreign nationals employers are now managing their homes entirely without hired help. By way of example, I turn to India, albeit the dependence on hired help and migrant care-labour has a globalized face today. With the raging Covid-19 pandemic, live-out hired help (also known as ‘part-time domestic help’) have been strictly told to keep away from the employer household.
During critical events, the unequal gender division of labour and class structures may be somewhat momentarily reversed or suspended or re-established. In times of catastrophes, pandemics, uprisings and wars, women’s reproductive labour acquires an intense scrutiny.
Quarantine diaries and mutiny diaries bring us to historical cross-roads for re-evaluating class-gender-race-caste. One is the current pandemic and the other a mutiny – what these events have in common is gender and a crisis in social reproduction.
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