Alb Eng
ABOUT QIKA 1≠1

Overthrow the order

12.7.2021

Cooking, ironing, supplying, cleaning and many other similar jobs take up the majority of a woman’s daily time. Being often financially dependent on the men of the family, women are forced to serve meals and wash dishes and clothes for them. All this amount of work that women do is seen as their natural obligation due to the traditional divisions of gender roles.

Restrictive measures and the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, isolated women further, with disproprotionate responsibilities over maintenance and care work. Data shows that the time women now spend time doing care-work, is almost equivalent to a full-time job.

Women who were lucky enough to be employed worked double shifts. Whereas the rest of the unemployed were given even more care obligations to other family members.

Even before the pandemic, women spent, on average, three times more time than men on household chores and childcare.

Historically,  housekeeping has been underestimated and in fact continues to be unrecognized as a job. That way, women are not only exploited, but their effort is not praised either. In cases of division of assets, both at their father’s and at their husband’s, women are considered strangers, unrelated. They do not have a single right on the property, because their work is not acknowledged.

In every house women’s contribution must be recognized and, furthermore, tasks should be equally assigned. By being in the kitchen all day or cleaning up others’ mess, women are unable to see the possibilities of engaging in social life.

Unpaid work is isolating women inside their own homes. That must change.

A table of food laid out with effort and delicacy, was flipped today. Women need to be free of opression inside and outside the home. Actions within the home simultaneously are interventions towards decreasing social inequalities. In addition, the empowerment and independence of women is affected by the economic model which must undergo structural changes. We do not accept our work to be depreciated or taken advantage of by the state. Let’s overthrow gender roles exactly as we did today with the table!