Obviously the tile is strange, but the million dollar question is whether really housewives are capable of contributing in the GDP of a nation?
As the economists put it the Gross Domestic Product is a measure of a country’s overall economic output. It is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year. And the housewives are stay-home entities, producing no goods or services! Perhaps this is the fact that has stigmatized the word and most of them feel shy to call themselves with this name.
But is it true that they don’t contribute in the GDP and constitute a burden on the producers? Let’s see!
In any business organization, people are normally categorized into three sections. First are the producers who basically make the production. Second is the managerial section which manages the work force and also supply-chain, sales and distribution activities. Third is the supporting section that supports them, starting from the sophisticated support services till down below the canteen workers and cleaners. All make up the business organization and contribute in the profit making of a company. If we look more attentively, the profit making section is only the producers and the remaining two sections are nothing but supporters or just auxiliary. Despite this fact, the company takes all of them in account and all are considered as contributors in the profit.
It is said that supporters or the auxiliary force is considered as contributor because it supports the producers and manages them, without this support, producers wouldn’t be able to make the production. And this fact makes all of them as producers and contributors in the profit.
Expanding our look, we see that even babysitting organizations, old houses and pizza makers are taken as GDP contributors. Their job is to prepare food or take care of elders or children when the parents are at work. More or less, the same work that a housewife does at her home.
Taking a society or family as whole, if few members of a family are producers or earners while other members are providing support to them, their services are not taken as contribution to the GDP. Isn’t it ridiculous?
While the fact is that our society needs more support than any other business organization. The children require proper upbringing. They need support and care at home as they receive education at school. The elders need support at home after spending their lives and hard earned money on our education and upbringing. In the lack of this support, children go astray and their ethical and moral values get badly affected. The children, not getting proper home support, resort to activities and entertainments leading to dangerous wicked in the society. This has been proved with examples by various social scientists.
The children are the most valuable asset of a nation as they are the producers of tomorrow, human resources for the nations, important members of our society and leaders of the coming generation. If we educate and train them well with good moral values, our support will, eventually, extend even to the next generation. A good society is built up through good families and households.
There are two clear responsibilities in any society. Both completing each other, the first is economic and second is social. The responsibilities of each are distributed between members of a family. One member will look after economic needs and the other will work for the family maintenance. Both are contributing in the social and familial development and above all, national development. Because the nation is not held up in the air, it is made up of these small families; we need to treat them as equal to the economic entities. If families are stable, nation is stable and its bases are stable. With national stability, long term and satisfactory economic progress is guaranteed. On the other side, if we lessen the importance of any section, the development will be handicapped. And the results would be dangerous.
Here the question is when the housewives are contributing to the nation building and working for the future generation, how on earth they are not contributing in the GDP of the nation? How their contribution for better family, better society and better nation could not make them proud of their jobs? If children go to the babysitters, it is economic activity, and if they stay at home with mother, it is acute uselessness! If elders are thrown into old houses, it is business, and if they are taken care by their family members, it’s a loss and shame! If the family is eating pizzas, hoteliers are business man and profit makers, and if the food is prepared at home, the makers are burden on the family!
We consider only those earning in cash as earners and contributors in the nation building. The cashless job of maintaining family, caring children and elders, upholding society’s morals and values, preventing it from degradation and disintegration, and saving a complete generation, is considered useless. A drastic change is needed in our mind set and also in the contributing sectors of GDP. The services of the housewives should be taken as monetary value and added into the GDP with specific column. And while returning people’s money to the people, they should get special consideration. This will be the real recognition of their services.
This is the time to understand importance of home and housewives. Their job is comparable to any level of economic progress. This is the home where you have to return; howsoever high you fly in your career and goals.
We should always take a lesson from those societies where the family structure is disintegrated. High technologies and valuable currencies cannot give them peace that they need badly. A Thousand kilowatt electric power is also not able to enlighten their inners. They are compelled to solace themselves in various unsocial ways. A large number of divorces and separations have made their children’s lives miserable. The reason is unstable family and this is because of the stigma attached to the word of housewife.
Let’s respect them and celebrate “A Housewives’ Day”.
By Ahmad Suhaib Nadvi
