High Court: No Woman is Unemployed, even as Homemaker she dons several hats

June 29, 2017:

Bench said she is finance minister, chartered accountant, chef, dutiful wife and affectionate mother rolled in one.

Is a married, unemployed woman ‘just’ a homemaker?? The Madras HC, stressing the role that a homemaker plays in a family, said that a woman is at once finance minister, CA, chef, dutiful wife & affectionate mother in the family.

Division bench of the High court said this while rejecting Puducherry electricity dept’s petition against paying ₹4 lakh as compensation to a family after a young woman died of accidental electrocution.

In year 2009, Malathi, who had gone to the farm came into contact with a snapped power cable & got electrocuted. Following her husband Sambath Kumar’s petition, a single bench in 2013 awarded a compensation of ₹4 lakh by calculating her monthly income as ₹3,000 & using the standard multiplier formula.

However, the electricity board appealed against this order contending that she was a homemaker with no source of income.

Rejecting this argument of  electricity board, the bench explained why a women like her are much more than that, said that “She wasn't only a dutiful wife & an affectionate mother of her two children, but also she was the finance minister of her family, she was the chef, she was the chartered accountant of the family, maintaining the income & expenses. The husband lost the company of his wife, the children lost their mother & her love & affection.”

The actual loss cannot be estimated without taking into account the features of a woman’s life over & beyond the routine. “The loss of personal care & individual attention by the deceased to her siblings, as a mother & as a wife to her husband; are all relevant materials to assess the loss of the services consequent to the death of a housewife,” the bench observed.

The High Court rejected electricity board’s claim that there's no negligence on its part, noting that it's the board, not the common man, which had control over the electrical system.