| The Madras high court has granted equal property rights to a home-maker, saying her contribution to a marriage is the same as that of her earning husband. To know why I’m cheering, please read on... The Big Story A home-maker’s worth: Madras high court puts a value  A still from The Great Indian Kitchen The cash really began rolling in after 1983 when Kannaian Naidu got a job in Saudi Arabia. His wife, Kamsala would be staying back with their three children in Neyveli, Tamil Nadu. As a single-parent, she had her work cut out and Kannaian assured her he would send money back home. It was a tidy sum. Between 1983 and 1994, Kannaian was able to send back enough for Kamsala to buy four properties. Each time he’d come to visit, he would bring cash, gold and jewellery. By the time he returned for good a decade later in December 1994, his wife had plans of her own, and these included the property bought by her with her husband’s money. In a case filed in a trial court in 1995, Kannaian said his wife could not claim ownership of the properties purchased with his money. The gold also belonged to him, he said, and had not been gifted to her. And for good measure, he accused Kamsala of ‘wayward’ behaviour and having an affair with a man roughly the age of one of their sons. Kamsala fought back. After all, she had sold some of her own ancestral land to finance her husband’s travel to Saudi Arabia. One of the properties had been bought by mortgaging the gold she received at her wedding. And, during the time her husband was away, she too had been earning through tuitions and tailoring. In fact, she had been keen to have a career as a teacher but gave up that dream at the request of Kannaian so that she could stay at home and look after the kids. The trial court agreed with the husband—the properties were his—and the case eventually landed up in the Madras high court. When Kannaian died in 2007, the three children took up the case on his behalf. Landmark judgement Regardless of her claims to financially contributing to the acquisition of the assets, Kamsala “played a vital role in managing the household chores by looking after the children, cooking, cleaning and managing day-to-day affairs of the family,” noted justice Krishnan Ramaswamy in a remarkable judgement delivered on June 21. “She sacrificed her dreams and spent her entire life towards the family and children.”  A vintage ad (Source: A Lady Science) Ensuring a comfortable environment at home, is “not a valueless job, but it is a job doing for 24 hours [sic] without holidays, which cannot be less equated with that of the job of an earning husband who works only for eight hours,” the judge ruled. And while there is no law that recognises a wife’s contribution, there is nothing to prevent a court from doing so, the judge added. “No law prevents the judges from recognising the contributions made by a wife facilitating her husband to purchase the property. In my view, if the acquisition of assets is made by joint contribution (directly or indirectly) of both the spouses for the welfare of the family, certainly both are entitled to equal share.” Accordingly, the judge ruled, three of the four properties belonged equally to husband and wife. The fourth property, purchased by mortgaging the wife’s jewellery, belonged solely to Kamsala. And the jewellery and gold bought by the husband during his time in Saudi Arabia, also belonged to her. [Read the judgement in LiveLaw here] Recognising women’s unpaid labour All over the world, women bear a disproportionate burden of housework. In patriarchal societies such as ours, the gender gap is particularly wide—with women spending 7.2 hours a day on cooking, cleaning and other chores compared to 2.8 hours by men. Obviously, the more time women spend on unpaid work at home, the less time they have for paid employment outside it. It’s not a coincidence that India has amongst the world’s lowest female labour force participation rates. Unpaid care work has been on the public radar since the pandemic highlighted the gap. Political parties from Kerala to West Bengal have been promising monthly income support to home-makers. And India is also looking at different methods to quantify the contribution of women’s household chores to the country’s GDP. Some economists reckon women’s unpaid labour to be as high as 39% of global GDP.  Representational Image (Source: Unsplash) Court judgments too have tried to put a value on the lives of home-makers by awarding more equal compensation in insurance matters. For instance, in motor accident claims where both husband and wife are killed or seriously injured, insurance companies tend to assess the wife’s compensation at a lower value. It is left to the courts to put a value to women’s reproductive labour. Appellate courts as well the Supreme Court have ruled that “women’s unpaid work amounts to an occupation to be compensated on a monthly basis upon her death,” says Prabha Kotiswaran, a law professor at King’s College, London. The Madras high court judgment read together with the earlier judgments that place a value to women’s unpaid work “will open the doors for a long overdue reform in Indian law, namely creating a matrimonial property regime to ensure economic justice for married women,” says Kotiswaran. [Read Prabha Kotiswaran’s paper analysing compensation cases between 1969 and 2009 here] Implications But the judgment also “renders visible the patriarchal marital bargain struck by millions of married couples each day whereby the woman decides to maintain the household while the husband engages in paid employment outside the home,” continues Kotiswaran. The husband’s employment “would be impossible without the labours of his wife who herself would have given up an alternate source of income,” she says. “Upon marital breakdown the husband cannot turn back on the bargain struck at the time of marriage. Assets purchased through joint efforts of the couple should therefore also be split equally.” But beyond granting value and assets, the judgment gives millions of home-makers recognition, visibility and dignity that is often denied to them in their day-to-day life. It tells them their labour matters. It has value. Their status in a marriage is second to none. It brings to focus the reality of so many women in this country. It empathises with the death of their dreams due to household responsibility. It tells them: We see you and we acknowledge your equal role in the marriage. [Read Monika Halan's opinion piece on how the judgment is a giant leap in women's rights over assets built during a marriage] | 
