The Delhi High Court made a double whammy of regressive statements recently, in an appeal case which had been brought before it, after a family court had previously refused to grant a man a divorce. The High Court ruled that not only does a woman being required to do household chores not amount to cruelty by her husband, but also that a woman’s request that he and her partner live independently of her in-laws does amount to cruelty.
Taken in tandem, these two points do nothing but reinforce how marriage as an institution is fundamentally patriarchal. They hark back to two of the most burdensome expectations of married women: that they perform the manual labour of the house, without it being regarded as serious work, and that they move in with their in-laws upon marriage, diminishing themselves as required to fit in to their husband’s world.
In Indian parlance, this is called “adjusting”. These culturally ingrained expectations are based on a system in which men provide, and women receive — while women’s contributions, in the home and beyond, are seen as trivial. These are impositions of roles, not a balance of responsibilities.
Even in contemporary relationships, and in double income households, we largely see childcare and cleaning roles — even if that’s merely the delegation of work to staff and any supervision that follows — fall on the shoulders of women who also work outside the home. Work within the home is work: it requires physical exertion and time, and often takes away energy to do anything other than to housekeep or to parent.
This idea that it is work remains a novel concept despite decades of progressive women discussing it, in frustrated shouting matches as much as in writing or lectures. Still, the fundamental system doesn’t shake. There are subtler rules too: like how it’s almost invariably women — wives, daughters and daughters-in-laws — who rise to serve guests tea. Of course, it goes without saying that they prepare it too. These are highly normalised practices — to the point that a man doing cooking, cleaning or serving would be noted by company (applauded, laughed at, getting tongues to wag — usually about the perceived incompetence of the wife).
Sometimes the inequality is more explicitly toxic. I often see that when a woman in my neighbourhood hunches over, sweeping the compound, while her husband literally stands with his arms akimbo and
instructs her. He won’t touch the broom himself. Of course, this is hardly the only couple I have observed performing some version of this, with the gender positions intact no matter what the backbreaking or spiritbreaking task.
The flipside of this is what experts term learned helplessness: for instance, deliberately seeming to bumble in a kitchen so that others will do the work in that space.
The logic that men are breadwinners, and everyone else in the household must vacillate between being supportive or being grateful, is deeply problematic. It is not enough to say that it is outdated, because all genders have been equally capable, always. It isn’t as if women evolved into capability in recent decades alone; instead, feminism brought opportunity, and through it, oppression has reduced. Slightly.