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]
In numbers
The number of women who applied to study overseas was up by 150% in 2022 compared to 2019. In 2019, just 10% of all student loan applications for foreign study were by women. Now in tier II and III towns, it’s 50:50.
Source: Economic Times
Can’t make this s*** up
A 16-year-old girl who snuck out late at night to be with her 20-year-old boyfriend at a park in Delhi’s Rohini was, tragically, gang-raped by four men who accosted the couple as they were leaving the park at around 1.30 am on Tuesday morning. The men beat up the boyfriend and then took turns to rape the girl.
Three of the four men have been arrested and police say they are locals from the area, aged between 15 and 20. A fourth is, at the time of writing, yet to be arrested.
But, in a twist, the police have also arrested the boyfriend on charges of rape. The reason? Under POCSO (protection of children from sexual offences), even consensual sex with a girl under the age of 18 is deemed to be rape.
What’s making news
It’s the UCC. Again.
It has long been an article of faith for the BJP. So, prime minister Narendra Modi’s push for a uniform civil code on Tuesday while addressing party workers in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh should not come as a surprise.
The PM’s reference comes on the heels of the Law Commission’s invitation for public comment on the issue. Interestingly, the same commission had stated in 2018 that the time was not right for a UCC as there was the possibility of ‘disprivileging’ weaker groups.
But what will a UCC actually look like? How will it affect tribal groups and areas in the north-east that have the Constitutional promise of following their own practices? Will it accommodate the demand for equal rights from the LGBTQI community? These are questions to which nobody seems to have an answer.
[I had written about the UCC in an earlier newsletter here]
Women at the centre of the Manipur stir
On Monday, the Indian Army posted a video saying women activists in the troubled state are “deliberately blocking routes and interfering” in its operations.
Manipur has a long history of activism by women. The Meira Paibis (literally women torchbearers) also known as Imas are Meitei women who have in the past focused on fighting alcoholism and drug abuse and gradually expanded their focus to human rights violations.
In Hindustan Times, Utpal Parashar on why women are at the centre of the Manipur stir.
…And the good news
106-year-old Rambai shows no signs of slowing down (Source: Twitter)
At 106, sprinter Rambai, who took up athletics just two years ago at the sprightly age of 104, shows no signs of slowing down. Last year, she set a world record in the 100m above-85 category. On Monday, she took home three gold medals (100m, 200m, short put) at the 18th National Open Athletics Championship in Dehradun.
Field notes
Lights, camera and time for action
After the meticulous research on stereotyping in Hollywood films tracked by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, a detailed report on 1,930 characters in Hindi films lays bare a grim picture that’s closer home. The study by the School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai was released earlier in the week.
It finds that 72% of characters, one in three, in Hindi films are played by cis-males, a majority of which fall into the age group 15-45 and belong to Hindu dominant castes. Queer characters make up just 2% of role and only 0.5% of characters are shown to be disabled.
When women play the lead it’s generally as a romantic interest. But intimacy is initiated by the male character. “Consent is still fraught with ambiguity, specifically because there is a greater emphasis on women remaining demure and expressing consent through non-verbal and symbolic gestures,” finds the study.
When women are shown to be employed, they tend to be teachers, bankers, software engineers, doctors and artists.
The most prevalent skin tone for female characters is fair; body type is thin.
As part of the project, three qualitative research projects—on women directors, screenwriters, and online media critcs—were also undertaken with select directors, screenwriters and online media critics.
Read the study here.
Around the world
The US Supreme Court has in quick succession struck down affirmative action for university admissions, ruled to grant First Amendment protection to online abuse and, on Friday, in a ruling that yet again shows the assertion of its conservative-dominated bench, agreed with a Colorado web designer who is opposed to same sex marriage and said the state’s law requiring her to serve everyone equally was unconstitutional in obliging her to create messages she is opposed to.
On Tuesday, the apex court reversed the conviction of a man who had made relentless online threats to a stranger on the grounds that the threats are protected by freedom of speech guarantees under the Constitution. Activists are outraged, reports Washington Post.
(Source: AFP)
The United Nations, has announced the appointment of Aarti Holla-Maini, an Indian-origin satellite industry expert as the director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs headquartered in Vienna. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to remind the UN that in the 77 years since it was founded in 1945, it has never been led by a woman.
In France, children under 15 will require parental consent before getting on to social media platforms. The new law approved on Thursday is an attempt to protect children online from cyberbullying and other crimes.
In Nepal, the Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the government to temporarily register same-sex marriages. The apex court had allowed such marriages via an order 15 years ago, but in the absence of a specific law, it could never be implemented. The new order to register the marriages ‘temporarily’ till a law is passed