Our world has an insidious ‘housework is for women’ mentality. This regressive school of thought is far common in my homeland, India. In pre-coronavirus times, maids helped lessen the chore gap in many middle-class households. But owing to lockdowns, many Indians are doing household chores all by themselves. And by Indians, I mean women.
This is exactly why there’s a Change.org petition asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “Tell Indian Men to Do an Equal Share of Household Chores in Your Next Speech”. And yes, a woman is behind it.
Chores have no gender but apparently, most men haven’t come to terms with that yet. So women are stuck doing even more work than usual at home, with men thinking they’re doing a huge favor by “helping out” at their own home.
For the record, I don’t know a single Indian man who has taken on an equal amount of household chores without being repeatedly “nagged”. Even then, they have failed to do a fair share of domestic work because “it is not their job” in the first place.
PS Domestic violence has also increased during the pandemic.
Little wonder then that single women have always been much happier than married women.
Recommended Reading:
What the Covid-19 lockdown tells us about the gender gap in house-work
We really do suck, don’t we? Sorry ladies. You deserve a lot better.
There are always exceptions, aren’t there Prakash? And pretty much everyone is capable of change :)
Seeing this post and the previous one, all I have to say is I’m ashamed to be an Indian man.