In 2023, a Twitter account called the Gender Pay Gap Bot became popular for automatically replying to any organisation that tweeted about International Womens Day, with data on their gender pay gap. It put pressure on companies, calling them out for posting fluff instead of working towards being an equal employer. In India, as of October last year, the female labour force participation stood at 37%. In the decade since market regulator SEBI made it compulsory for listed companies to have at least one woman director on their board, women’s representation on Indian corporate boards has tripled from 6 per cent in 2013 to 18 per cent in 2022. What is the reality for these women at work, then? If we remove the fluff, what story does the data tell us?
Deloitte’s 2023 Women @ Work report states that the top three concerns for working women in India are women’s rights, financial security and mental health. In comparison with their global counterparts, women in India take on a majority of domestic tasks such as cleaning, cooking, home planning and childcare. A concept that has gained immense popularity in recent times is the idea of women bearing a ‘mental load’ – the cognitive and emotional burden of managing the workplace, the household and the relationships and responsibilities within each sphere. Moreover, the invisibility of it makes it a lonely experience, with women’s constant juggling and switching going unnoticed. 59% of working Indian women state that they are solely responsible for childcare in their homes, 48% say they are solely responsible for cleaning and other domestic tasks, and 8% say they are the primary earners.
There are structural reasons why women are able to, and continue to take on mental loads. Men’s jobs are seen as more rigid, linear and traditional whereas women find flexible options. They then make themselves more available to take on childcare, feeding into the ‘supermom’ narrative. This kind of idealisation is a burden on most women, to multitask, never stop, never fail, never rest. In a monologue from the Barbie movie that has since become culturally iconic, America Ferrera’s character articulates this burden: “You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining”. There’s a reason it resonated with the audience the way it did, and it’s because an invisible weight was finally presented to the world in a form that it would perhaps find easier to accept.
For many families, the lengthy COVID-induced period of lockdowns disrupted traditional gender divisions of labour within homes. Research has shown that having both partners at home made men more aware of, and therefore take on more of the domestic burden. A UK-based analysis of Understanding Society data found that while women’s share of housework fell from pre-COVID to mid-lockdown, by September 2020, old gender divisions were re-established. In order for there to be a better balance then, there is the hard work of reframing societal expectations of what men and women’s domains are. Sociologist Daniel Carson, however, suggests a slightly radical action point (and the caveat is that very few women have the luxury to do so) – perhaps the best way for women to reduce their burden is to actually do less. Initially, of course, it might lead to distress and shock, but as operant conditioning works, men will learn when there are negative consequences to their behaviour.
