NOMAHLUBI KHWINANA & NALELI MOROJELE | How social security can serve as redress for gender inequality

They work in kitchens, in back rooms, in crowded township homes, in rural homesteads and in overstretched households across the country.

They care for children, older persons, persons with disabilities and sick relatives. They do it out of duty, necessity, love and social expectation. Because they do it in private, their is work is rarely treated as labour.

This is the shared experience of South African women from all racial, religious, ethnic and class backgrounds.

Seen as “women’s work”, caregiving often constitutes the second shift in a woman’s day. Structurally, it reduces resource demands on the state while simultaneously contributing to the economy. Caregivers, most of whom are women, should therefore be compensated for this work through the universal basic income grant (Ubig).

The second shift is a term popularised in the 1980s by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the US. The term was largely used to reflect on the lived experiences of white American women who, for the first time in history, were entering the paid workforce in large numbers. It refers to the unpaid household and childcare work women perform in their homes after completing eight hours of paid work outside the home.

Unpaid work is considered unskilled when it is recognised as work. Because it happens in the home, it is mostly performed by women and in the service of friends and family and is not socially recognised as work.

The nature of gender inequality in patriarchal societies such as South Africa means the bulk of unpaid work in the home is performed by women and the girl child

For women of colour and most white women around the world, the second shift has been a real but invisible reality for time immemorial. Due to the lack of social recognition of women’s unpaid work, there was no vocabulary to accurately describe it.

Servants, homesteaders, subsistence farmers, midwives and so on have always worked second shifts, a practice which continues in contemporary rural South Africa. In urban areas, townships and suburbs, caregiving is predominantly performed by women, whether employed or unemployed, partnered or single.

The nature of gender inequality in patriarchal societies such as South Africa means the bulk of unpaid work in the home is performed by women and the girl child.

The state has made some progressive attempts to remedy this imbalance. The departments of health and social development has made great strides in establishing early childhood development centres, care centres, old-age homes, psychiatric and rehabilitation facilities, and centres for persons with disabilities.

The department also provides funding to hundreds of non-profit organisations that support vulnerable and marginalised people. This is perhaps one of the greatest, but unrecognised, achievements in our democratic dispensation.

However, the communal nature of South African culture, especially in black communities, means most families opt to care for their orphaned relatives and their sick and vulnerable loved ones in the home rather than have them placed in facilities which are often far from home.

The patriarchal structure of society then places the responsibility of care onto the women and girl children in the home. For girls especially, this means less time available for academics, extracurricular activities and play.

The constitution gives us a better framework. South Africa is founded on human dignity, equality and non-sexism. It guarantees equal protection and benefit of the law and recognises the right of access to social security, including appropriate social assistance.

A 2022 study conducted at Wits University by Koketso Sebola found unpaid work accounted for 9.91% to 27.61% of SA’s GDP between 2010 and 2019, with women’s share exceeding 70% of that value

Those commitments should mean more than ceremonial words. Equality is not achieved by pretending men and women move through society under the same conditions. It requires confronting the social structures that make women disproportionately responsible for the labour of care. Unpaid care work is one of those structures.

The burden of care is thus shifted from the state to individuals who receive no compensation for their labour. However, the principles of Ubuntu and equality, and an ethos of fairness, require acknowledging the contributions of these caregivers to society.

A 2022 study conducted at Wits University by Koketso Sebola found unpaid work accounted for 9.91% to 27.61% of SA’s GDP between 2010 and 2019, with women’s share exceeding 70% of that value.

In the growing discourse about social assistance in the form of a Ubig, perhaps we ought to consider starting with the caregivers, those who contribute to society and the economy in measurable and immeasurable, seen and unseen ways.

As proponents of the Ubig underscore its potential to alleviate social problems such as inequality, it is only appropriate to consider its potential to alleviate economic gender inequality in the short term, while the longer-term objective of comprehensive gender equality is pursued.

A universal basic income grant should therefore be taken seriously — not only as anti-poverty policy but as partial redress for the gendered burden of unpaid care work.

It is not a silver bullet. But it is one honest way for the state to admit what women have always known: care has value, and justice requires that we stop treating it as free.