Pandemic places spotlight on ‘care at home’ balance

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has changed our way of living, as we now have more time at home and even work in our comfort zones.

This shift highlights the need for more balance between males and females in their roles at home.

The 2021 National Household Care Survey (NHCS) commissioned by Oxfam Pilipinas, the Philippine Commission on Women, and other partners, indicated that unpaid care and domestic work at home still weighed heavily on females.

The data also indicated that in the first quarter of this year, women spent 13 hours a day doing unpaid care work at home, including supervision of their dependents, compared to 8 hours for men.

As a primary activity, women spend 6.5 hours per day on care work, thrice than the average 2.43 hours spent by men doing the same chore.

The survey also found out that young girls spend approximately up to 6.06 hours on care work compared to boys who spend only up to 4.33 hours.

Unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) include the various chores and responsibilities within a household, such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of children and the elderly, and so on.

The survey was conducted from January to March 2021 and involved interviews with 1,177 individuals from randomly sampled households in Metro Manila and the provinces of Cagayan, Masbate, Eastern Samar, Cebu, Maguindanao, North Cotabato, and Sultan Kudarat.

In a post-Father’s Day talk headed by Oxfam last June 21, 2021, PCW Executive Director Atty. Kristine Yuzon-Chaves cited a 2019 study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), which showed that from 1990-2015, women have been spending a disproportionate amount of time on UCDW, while males spend twice as much time on paid market work.

The PIDS study also outlined other potential non-monetary outcomes such as better child schooling outcomes, including in-school attendance and age-for-grade score.

Yuzon-Chaves highlighted the importance of UCDW to the country’s economy, citing estimates that it accounted for at least 20 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), valued at P2 trillion.

Yet, Yuzon-Chaves said, “policymakers have historically overlooked unpaid care work and has gone unmeasured in official national statistics”, which affected other rights accessible to females.

“The unequal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work affects women’s and girls’ education, economic participation, as well as rest and leisure activities. It reduces their productivity and increases likelihood of employment in low-paid, part-time, and informal work,” said Yuzon-Chaves.

She said that the NHCS also showed that heavy UCDW also affected the well-being of girls, with 1 out of 3 Filipino women having experienced injury, illness, disability, or other forms of harm in the past 6 months. The top 3 illnesses attributed to UCDW were back, muscle and joint ache, headache and dizziness, and stress and irritability.

Yuzon-Chaves said recognizing, reducing, and redistributing UCDW was part of the Philippine government’s commitment to addressing factors limiting women’s and girls’ rights, which was “made more important by the COVID-19 pandemic”.

The PCW’s strategies include research, technology, and enforcement of existing laws related to empowering women and girls in the family.

“[The COVID-19 pandemic] has provided both an added burden and a unique opportunity for the care economy. (sic) Recognizing, reducing, and redistributing the burden of [UCDW] requires a holistic approach with strong collaboration among government and private stakeholders. We cannot emphasize enough the need for more data to show how the care economy contributes to the society’s development and well-being,” she said.

Yuzon-Chaves shared the recommendations made by the PCW in light of the 2021 NHCS findings:

– Make UCDW visible through research, time-use surveys and other appropriate methods;

– Strengthen collaboration with relevant government agencies, including national statistics agencies and labor departments, to prioritize valuation of care work;

– Provide opportunities for women and men to participate in the labor force while performing care work;

– Involve private stakeholders and civil society;

– Address the root causes of inequality through education, especially to combat harmful gender stereotypes and gender bias; and

– Provide platform for men and boys to expand their roles in family and community-building.

TEAM PLAY AT HOME

Atty. Third Bagro and Dr. Tina Langit-Bagro, who run the Instagram account Mrs. Domesticated, shared during the webinar how they team up to deal with their daily lives at home.

They met during their undergraduate days at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. They continued their relationship even as they pursued respective postgraduate degrees and finally tied the knot in 2013, and now raising three children.

“Seeing each other grow throughout the years, we’ve adjusted a lot also. It’s not without challenges. With the pandemic, we’ve learned to respect more each other’s wants, each other’s persons and personalities,” Tina said.

Third explained the origins of their shared Instagram account, which was originally his wife’s. They now use the account to share their adventures in dividing housework among family members.

He also shared that his favorite home activities are playing with their children, cleaning the kitchen, and being a “plantito” which they both developed at the start of the pandemic.

“The Mr. Domesticated really started with Tina. She was Mrs. Domesticated, and she convinced me to make it a tandem. Even before the pandemic, we’ve known the importance of doing housework and sharing chores between the couple, because that’s what a marriage is. You share the good things, and the normal things to make you survive every day,” he said.

Tina said their established communication is what made dividing housework between them easier and more efficient, along with effective time management.

Their children are assigned to fix their beds, return their toys and books to their proper place, help set the table, and sometimes help with cooking and washing the dishes.

Tina said their effectivity in their professional work reflected on their household chores.

In the pandemic, the parents also adjusted to their “new part-time work”, assisting their children with distance learning, something which they are still getting used to.

“We communicate a lot. I think this is one of the key things that we as couples really need to do, really communicate. Our usual day, Third wakes up at 7 a.m. or earlier, to prepare the food and wake the children because they have school time at around 7:30 a.m. From the time I wake up, until 8 or 9 p.m., I’m the one helping the kids with school work, with Third helping the kids from time to time,” Tina said.

She said the pandemic gave Third more time for care work at home, and she feels “lucky” about her husband’s willingness to do household work.

“I feel lucky that Third is open to helping out. When you are the girl, there would always be times that you would feel that it’s all on you when at home. But I think in the pandemic, more time has been opened for Third, and I guess other fathers also, to do more for their homes, and for their family,” she said.

They shared three things that couples need to have harmony in their household – open-mindedness, a give-and-take relationship, and finding what brings them joy.

Third also encouraged fathers to “look at the big picture”, to observe what happens at home, now that the pandemic has allowed them to have more time, with Tina adding that adjusting the roles at home, even for them, is “a process”.

“The pandemic is a big opportunity for fathers to see the difficulty of work at home, to ensure that the home is clean and neat to look at. When the home is not neat, the parents cannot work and the kids cannot learn. Now, fathers are forced to observe. We have to observe what happens at home from when we wake up to the end of the day. I feel if we can do that, we can realize that help is needed at home. We also have to think that we are not doing this just for ourselves, but for the family,” he said.

CARE WORK EXPERIENCES IN THE LOCAL LEVEL

Vice Mayor Leo Jasper Candido of Quinapondan, Eastern Samar, said that he became an advocate for care work after attending a seminar in Cebu.

Quinapondan is a 5th-class municipality with a population of 14,779, with farming and fishing as its main sources of income.

“My wife was shocked when I came back home, asking me what had happened to me and I suddenly started helping at home. It was an enlightenment on my part, which is why I became an advocate for unpaid care work. Before that, I thought housework was normal for mothers, and that situation was normal for households,” said Candido.

In 2018, he sponsored Municipal Ordinance No. 6, series of 2018, or the “WECare ordinance” which recognized and valued UCDW in the town with funds provided for opportunities for the women and girls in the household, with the following “4R” framework:

– Recognition of care work and a change in attitude towards gender roles;

– Reducing arduous and difficult care tasks/hours of women and families;

– Redistributing care – in the household, in the community, to the state or employers; and

– Representation of careers in decision-making with government/communities.

The five “main parts” of the ordinance include data collection, shifting social norms, time and labor saving equipment, care services, and financial mechanisms.

Several of the town’s accomplishments in relation to the said ordinance, which Candido also shared, include:

– Investment/purchase of time and labor saving equipment like cooking stove, rice cooker, and kitchen utensils;

– Municipal social welfare office lead the session on understanding unpaid care work;

– Local Government celebrated women’s month celebration with unpaid care work as theme; and

– Care dialogue sessions with husband and wife in the family development session.