Women, Work, and the West
Exploring the role of the "Default Homemaker" and how it influences work-life balance
There are striking differences in work-life balance between Indian and US/EU-based companies. Even when an organization is headquartered in the US or Europe, its Indian counterpart often has a far worse work-life balance.
Why is that? My alternate hypothesis: poor female workforce participation.
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In India, only 11% of urban women are salaried employees, and a mere 5.3% hold formal, regular jobs [1]. Compare this to the West: in the US, around 60% of women are in the workforce, and in the EU/UK and Canada, that number is consistently above 60%. Let alone the formal sector, the overall gender gap in labour force participation is also way lower in these Western countries. [2, 3]
What this disparity essentially means is that there is no "default homemaker" in most Western households to absorb domestic duties. This reality indirectly enforces shorter working hours for both partners. When both partners are working, the 8-hour boundary must be respected because household responsibilities must be shared.
This goes for a complete toss in the East, and especially in India, where traditional domestic roles are still very prevalent. This cultural norm often expects the main earner's work hours to be stretched well beyond the 8-hour standard, and in most cases, that earner is a man.
We are culturally hard-wired this way. A manager in their 40s can often ask a junior employee in their 20s to work late because they themselves did the same thing countless times. They didn’t have to worry about doing household chores because there was someone (often more than one family member) at home taking care of everything else. The “village” was always present, even without a prime member.
The only way this dynamic changes is if more and more women join the workforce. Of course, there's a risk that this could simply lead to a "double burden" where men continue to work long hours and women take on both a corporate job and domestic work [4]. It's a difficult, transitional phase where women are expected to be both a breadwinner and the primary homemaker, leading to burnout and stress.
But this transition would be temporary, hopefully. As more women enter and stay in the workforce, the societal expectation that domestic labor is a "woman's job" should begin to crumble. This should open the door for a more equitable distribution of household chores, childcare, and elder care.
Ultimately, the increase in female workforce participation is a necessary first step. While the double burden is a significant hurdle, it's also the pressure point that can prompt the cultural changes needed for both partners to contribute equally at home. This bottom-up change in the workforce composition is what's needed to build a sustainable, more balanced work culture for everyone.
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Ordinary thoughts, shared with hope. Pass it along if it resonated.
References:
[1] PLFS 2021–22 (Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, Govt. of India)
[2] Gender gap in labour force participation rates
[3] Women in the labor force, 2023: women and workplace flexibilities