Geetanjali Krishna: The arithmetic of a woman's worth

She was a sweet young thing, a good wife in awe of her husband. Then she met me. Mind you, I don't normally go about waving my feminist flag at unsuspecting people, but the one sentence that Manju uttered had me calculating the real and potential value that women bring to their households.

It all began when she said shyly that in her household her husband's needs always came first. "He works so hard in his job as a driver; brings in the major share of our household income and takes good care of us," she said piously. "Isn't it my duty to give him the lion's share of the family meal and kowtow to his every wish?" Masking my rising hackles with a smile, I asked her why she thought her husband brought more to the household than she did. Before we knew it, I was teaching her simple household arithmetic.

"You work as a cleaner in three houses. How much do you earn," I asked. She replied that she earned Rs 9000 in all. "But my husband brings home at least Rs 14,000, more if there's overtime," she said. I pointed out that she lived in quarters provided by one of her employers. How much did she think it would cost them to rent a room? At least Rs 5,000, she said, provided they were willing to compromise by getting a shared toilet. This brought her salary on a par with that of her husband, I said. By then, she'd warmed up. "One of my employers also pays my two children's school fees, about Rs 500 per month," she said. Also, she added, they almost never needed to buy clothes, as between her three employers, there were enough cast-offs for her to use. "In fact, one of them has young children as well, so I don't even have to buy school bags, pencil boxes, tiffin boxes or bottles for my kids... My employers give me everything!" She would probably have spent at least Rs 1,500 a month more on all this, I estimated. "So what does that bring my total earnings to," she asked, with a new light in her eyes. I told her we weren't done yet, for there were many contributions she made which couldn't be so easily monetised.

Thanks to her getting a room in her employer's house, her two young children were growing up in a nice neighbourhood instead of a slum. "Oh, you can never put a value on that," she said. "Children easily fall into bad company in slums." Also, she cleaned her house, cooked hot meals for the family and took care of the children. "Yes, I work only from eight in the morning to 3 pm, when the children are in school. And I wake up at five every morning to pack tiffins for them all," she said. Further, she added, if anyone in her or her husband's family fell ill, she took time off from work to tend to them. All in all, we calculated, even keeping her non-monetary contributions aside, Manju was bringing in more to the household than her husband.

"It's not his fault," Manju said. "I don't think he has ever thought of doing this math. It's only after adding everything up that even I have understood my worth." Suddenly looking visibly charged and happy, she went aside to make a call. From a distance I saw her laughing on the phone. "I was just fixing up with my sister and two friends to meet in the park this evening," she said happily. "I'll tell my husband it's his turn to clean the kitchen tonight."