Indian women demand division of household chores

From restrictions on their movement to being forced to do myriad household chores, women are facing the impact of the lockdown.

Subarna Ghosh, who runs a charity working on reproductive justice, has filed an online petition urging Prime Minister Narender Modi to step in and ask men to divide household chores.

“I filed it because inequity was already there, but the kind of imbalance in housework following the lockdown has come absolutely in our faces”, says Subarna.

Subarna lives in a small apartment in Mumbai with her husband and two children. In the beginning, when the lockdown was announced, she was fine but with several lockdown extensions, she was annoyed as nobody in the family was helping with household chores.

This resulted in more arguments; she scolded her children more as she alone carried the whole house workload.

Then came a time when she totally gave up and stopped doing any household chore. As things piled up, family members realised what Subarna was going through and decided to help in whatever possible way they could.

Lockdown forced people to sit together under the same roof for a long time. In some cases, it was a cause of friction while in others people got time to discuss affairs around them and understand each other better.

As per a report by International Labour Organization, women in urban India in 2018 spent 312 minutes a day on unpaid care work while men spent 29 minutes. In villages, it was 291 minutes for women compared to 32 minutes for men.

So far, over 70,000 people have signed Subarna's petition.

Aditi Prasad, a physiotherapist, lives with her husband and two children in Delhi. Her situation was no different.

“It was like a nightmare. All of a sudden we heard the news that no maids would be allowed to work. There is so much to do from washing clothes to ironing clothes, cooking food to feeding kids, dishwashing, etc, all was on my head. It was a big problem for me” says Aditi.

Aditi also complains about prevalent patriarchy in our society.

“It is male-biased society. Men don't usually work and they are not even expected to work,” says Aditi.

After almost 10 days, Aditi’s husband Gaurav realised how traumatic it had become for his wife to manage the whole house.

“I have just started working from home and I know how painful it gets. Maybe I am helping her with 25-30% of the work but again even that is not too much assistance that I am extending," says Gaurav

On being asked if Subarna got any response from PM Modi, she said, “I haven’t got any direct responses as yet but I am quite sure that they would be following up on it."