Housewives or homemakers are “nation builders” and “building blocks for the nation’s road to holistic progress”, the Supreme Court said Thursday as it fixed Rs 30,000 as their notional monthly income, for the purpose of motor accident insurance claims.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N K Singh enhanced the insurance amount payable for the death of a woman in a road accident on November 25, 2001, from Rs. 8.4 lakh to Rs 62.78 lakh.

In December 2023, the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal ordered the payment of Rs 2,42,000 to the woman’s legal heirs by way of insurance. In December 2024, the Punjab and Haryana High Court enhanced this to Rs 8.43 lakh with 7.5 per cent interest from the date of filing of the claim petition, following which her heirs approached the top court.

“When the efforts of the homemaker towards the husband and children are taken on the whole, it cannot be disputed that although her labour, be emotional or physical, is within the four walls of the home, its impact is much wider. In enabling the direct contribution today of their husbands and tomorrow of their children, they are the building blocks for the nation’s road to holistic progress,” the bench said.

Writing for the bench, Justice Karol said the loss of a homemaker is “not limited to husband and children”.

“It also directly impacts the women’s own parents, who have been deprived of the love and company of their child, who have lost the support and comfort of this person and are left alone with this boundless grief. Still further, the loss is acutely felt by her in-laws, who are more often than not members of the same household and therefore dependent on the love, labour and dedication of this person for food or medicines, for doctor’s visits, or even for the regular company over a morning tea. Strict arithmetic calculation does not lend its services to any of these scenarios,” Justice Karol said.

The bench said that in cases involving the death of a homemaker, Motor Accident Claims Tribunals, High Courts, and the Supreme Court should award an additional lump-sum amount of Rs 30,000 under the head of “loss of domestic care”. The amount, it said, would help offset the inherent disadvantage faced by homemakers when compensation is calculated on the basis of a conservatively assessed notional income.

It added that the amount should take into account the homemaker’s contribution to the household’s smooth functioning, the loss of maternal support for children, the loss of spousal support, the support and care of an adult child, and the support and care of the deceased’s parents.

The bench clarified that the amount of Rs. 30,000 is “to be taken as a ‘stand-in’ (basic minimum monthly income) for monthly income in cases where the homemaker does not have an input into the house, in strictly conventional, monetary terms”. “In those cases where the homemaker is part of the workforce, the component of loss of domestic care shall be in addition to the monthly income as may be proved before the Tribunal/Courts.”

“It is ironic to describe a homemaker as dependent on earning members when, in reality, the household’s functioning depends substantially on the homemaker. The earning members are, in fact, solely dependent on the homemaker, but alas, this reality does not receive the acknowledgement it deserves. Efforts have been made across fields to some success, but undeniably, the road is still long.”

‘One-sided scenario’

Explaining how the work performed by homemakers is often undervalued, the court observed that routine household tasks such as cooking, cleaning and caregiving play a vital role in supporting the paid workforce and enabling economic productivity. However, it noted that these contributions are generally not recognised as productive economic activity in measures such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“To put the enormity of what is missed out by these conventional methods” of calculating notional income, “it may be noted that every day, around 16 billion hours individual are devoted to unpaid domestic work and care,” the bench said.

The court also referred to a Time Use Survey conducted in 2019, “which highlights the extent of unpaid domestic and caregiving work, particularly undertaken by women.”

It said the survey found that women aged 15–59 spend more than seven hours a day on unpaid domestic work, compared with fewer than three hours for men. On average, women undertake 2.6 times more unpaid caregiving and household responsibilities, even while also engaged in income-generating work.

“This one-sided scenario is probably one of the reasons why the country has a low female labour force participation at 31.7 per cent, since the societal framework generally presumes such responsibilities to be automatically falling upon women. Women’s unpaid caregiving work is estimated to contribute 15-17 per cent of India’s GDP, yet it remains unpaid and unrecognised,” the bench said.

“Efforts have been made to address this gap by methods such as the replacement cost approach, which…pertains to calculating the economic impact of hiring help to undertake those activities, or through the opportunity cost approach, which considers the income foregone by a homemaker by not participating in the labour market,” it added.

“This economic shift of valuing a homemaker’s efforts is not limited only to monetary aspects. There has been a shift in sensibilities – a married woman who takes care of the house is no longer called a housewife and has now been elevated to the deserved status of homemaker in recognition of the multitude of facets that her presence in the home covers.”

Nurturing and developing human capital

Highlighting the significance of homemakers, the court said that women’s contribution to society extends far beyond biological reproduction. It noted that women play a central role in nurturing and developing human capital, which underpins the country’s broader aspirations, including its goal of becoming one of the world’s largest economies.

“It is often said that a mother is the first teacher that a child has. This teaching, however, is not like a school or a college, which has a definite end date and instead continues for the entire lives of both the mother and the child. Whatever positive act is undertaken by the child, such as learning a skill, a language, a trade or a profession, is informed by the training that is given daily by the mother.”

“Similarly, and most significantly, human relations, which are the cornerstone of society, are perceived and understood first and foremost through the ways exemplified by the conduct of the mother. The everyday nudging and signalling towards proper behaviour and etiquette later form the path which the said child would then emulate for their future generations. It is, therefore, a successive chain built inter-community and intergenerationally of trust, cooperation and transmission of cultural memory, norms, which take the form of social bonds that sustain an individual either as familial relations or friendships and to an extent even professional networks.”

The judgement said, “On the emotional and psychological plane, the inherent ability of a homemaker to juggle multiple aspects whether it is meals, properly ironed clothes, stocking up supplies, caring for the elderly in the house, ensuring that the children stay on top of their schoolwork and so many more things that enabled, to use a somewhat stereotypical expression, the ‘men of the house’, to have their undivided focus on earning a good living”.

“They provide a sense of insulation from the pressures of the outside world, a bubble in which everything is taken care of and all that is needed for the people therein is to relax and rejuvenate, preparing themselves for what the next day might bring. In the majority of households, this is taken to be ‘normal’, but the truth is that those who do not have this luxury truly understand what is missing in their lives.”