KOCHI: Long before the Supreme Court declared homemakers as “nation builders” and directed that their unpaid domestic work be valued at a minimum of Rs 30,000 a month in accident-compensation cases, a small Kerala-based organisation had attempted to answer a question that society had largely ignored: what is the economic value of a woman’s work at home?
That answer came in a 2009 study, Women’s Economic Contribution through Their Unpaid Household Work: The Case of India, jointly conducted by Thrissur-based Evangelical Social Action Forum (ESAF) and Canada-based HealthBridge among women in and around Nagpur.
The study would go on to find a place in Supreme Court jurisprudence, first in the 2010 judgment in Arun Kumar Agrawal vs National Insurance Co Ltd, that resonated in the apex court’s landmark June 11, 2026, verdict recognising unpaid domestic work as economically valuable.
The latest judgment observed that the contribution of homemakers extends far beyond household chores. Besides managing the household, they are the family’s “first teacher”, nurturing children and transmitting values, while also providing the domestic support that enables earning members to pursue their livelihoods.
Calling homemakers “nation builders,” the court ruled that their unpaid labour deserves monetary recognition and fixed Rs 30,000 per month as the minimum benchmark while computing compensation in motor-accident claims.
For ESAF founder K Paul Thomas, the judgment is the culmination of an idea that began with the organisation’s work among women self-help groups. “We were working closely with women through our livelihood and empowerment programmes. We wanted to bring women into the mainstream, but realised their biggest contribution remained invisible because it never earned a wage,” he told TNIE.
“Our objective was to quantify what society took for granted. The Supreme Court recognising that unpaid domestic work has real economic value is a significant affirmation of what we tried to demonstrate through research years ago,” Paul said.
The study, quoted by the SC in the Arun Kumar Agrawal judgment, estimated that the unpaid work performed by women in rural and urban India was worth nearly `857 billion (about $167.5 billion) annually, underscoring the enormous contribution excluded from conventional economic accounting.
Sandhya Suresh, who now heads sustainable banking at ESAF Small Finance Bank and was closely associated with the research, said the findings emerged from years of grassroots engagement with women borrowers.
“Most of our members were women. We found they started work before dawn and continued till almost midnight. They managed their homes, cared for children and elderly, and then worked on farms or family enterprises without earning a rupee because it was their own land,” she recalled.
“What surprised us even more was that despite working the longest hours, many women had no money of their own. Some had to borrow small amounts from their husbands or sons just to contribute to their thrift groups. We began asking ourselves, “If she is working harder than anyone else, why is that work considered to have no value?”
Those questions eventually led ESAF to collaborate with healthcare consulting firm HealthBridge for the report.
The study argued that women’s unpaid work effectively subsidises families, businesses and even governments by sustaining the workforce without appearing in national income statistics.
It found that women routinely worked up to 16 hours a day, combining paid and unpaid labour, leaving little time for rest or recreation.
The SC’s latest verdict mirrors many of those conclusions. Drawing from the National Statistical Office’s Time Use Survey, it noted that women spend over seven hours every day on unpaid domestic work, contributing an estimated 15-17% to India’s GDP— a metric missing from formal economic calculations.
‘Nation builders’
The recent landmark SC order recognising homemakers as ‘nation builders’ and fixing a Rs 30K monthly benchmark for their unpaid domestic work echoes a 2009 study conducted by Thrissur-based ESAF and Canada’s HealthBridge.
The study argued that women’s unpaid work effectively subsidises families, businesses and even governments by sustaining the workforce without appearing in national income statistics. It found that women routinely worked up to 16 hours a day, combining paid and unpaid labour, leaving little time for rest or recreation