Women Are More Than Mothers. Why Are They Expected to Do It All?

By: Rachita Sharma, Managing Editor | Monday, 20 July 2026

Women are much more than mothers, yet society continues to expect them to shoulder the bulk of unpaid care work alongside successful careers. This opinion piece argues that true gender equality begins when men share equal responsibility at home. It's time India's public leaders championed partnership over outdated gender roles.

A university convocation is supposed to celebrate possibility. It is a day when graduates are encouraged to dream bigger, think boldly and imagine lives unconstrained by convention. That is why Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel's recent address at a university convocation felt so jarring.

Speaking to graduating women, where a majority of the medals were given to women; Anandiben advised women to first become "expert mothers" before aspiring to become IAS officers, teachers or other professionals. Her address put the onus of household chores and child care on women folk.

Her comments were defended by some as a reminder that career success should not come at the cost of family life. But that defence misses the point entirely.

The problem was never that she spoke about motherhood. Motherhood is one of the most meaningful roles many women choose to embrace. The problem was that, at a ceremony celebrating academic achievement, women were reminded that their greatest responsibility still lay elsewhere.

No one tells young men at convocations that before becoming successful bureaucrats, doctors or entrepreneurs, they must first become expert fathers or expert homemakers.

That difference matters.

The Burden of Domestic Labour Falls on Women Alone

The speech triggered widespread criticism on social media because it echoed an expectation that many Indian women know intimately. Women are encouraged to pursue education and careers, but they are also expected to excel at every aspect of domestic life. Society celebrates the "superwoman" who somehow manages work, children, cooking, cleaning, ageing parents and the invisible mental load of running a household. It rarely stops to ask why she is expected to do it all in the first place.

This expectation is not empowerment. It is patriarchy wrapped in the language of sacrifice.

The irony is that much of India's economy is quietly sustained by work that women perform without recognition or pay.

According to the Government of India's Time Use Survey (2019), women spend an average of 299 minutes every day (almost five hours) on unpaid domestic services such as cooking, cleaning and household management. On the contrary men spend 97 minutes, just over an hour and a half. Women also devote significantly more time to unpaid caregiving for children, elderly relatives and other family members.

The Imbalance that Leads to Lesser Opportunities for Women

This is not simply about household chores. It is about opportunity.

Every hour spent on unpaid work is an hour that cannot be spent earning an income, pursuing higher education, building a business, participating in public life or simply resting. Estimates by UN Women and the International Labour Organization show that Indian women perform nearly ten times more unpaid care and domestic work than men, one of the widest gender gaps in the world. Yet because this labour is unpaid, it remains invisible in GDP calculations despite being indispensable to the functioning of households and the economy.

Think about what this really means. The careers of millions of Indian men are made possible because someone else is ensuring the home functions smoothly. Meals are prepared. Clothes are washed. Children are cared for. Parents are looked after. School bags are packed. Doctor's appointments are remembered. Festivals are organised. Emotional crises are managed.

That "someone" is overwhelmingly a woman.

When she chooses to pursue a career herself, none of these responsibilities disappear. Instead, she simply works two shifts.

This unequal burden has consequences that extend far beyond individual families. According to the National Statistics Office's Periodic Labour Force Survey, nearly 69 per cent of urban women who are outside the labour force cite childcare and household responsibilities as the primary reason they are not employed. This is not a lack of ambition. It is a lack of time.

Indian Women in the Workforce: A Missed Opportunity

India has made encouraging progress in increasing women's labour-force participation in recent years, but millions of educated women continue to leave jobs, refuse promotions or never enter the workforce because the demands of unpaid caregiving leave them with little choice.

The economic cost of this inequality is staggering. A landmark report by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that advancing gender equality could add around $700 billion annually to India's GDP by increasing women's participation in the workforce and narrowing gender gaps in employment and productivity. At a time when India aspires to become one of the world's largest economies, leaving millions of capable women underrepresented in paid work because they shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic labour is not just unfair. It is economically self-defeating.

Yet our public conversations continue to focus on making women better at juggling impossible expectations instead of questioning why those expectations exist at all.

The Answer Lies in Building Equal Partnerships with Men

The answer is not to ask women to become expert homemakers alongside expert professionals.

The answer is to expect men to become equal partners.

Marriage is a partnership, not a hierarchy. Household chores are not "women's work". Child-rearing is not "women's work". Caring for ageing parents, attending parent-teacher meetings, cooking dinner, remembering vaccination schedules, cleaning bathrooms and managing the endless invisible tasks that keep a family running are responsibilities that belong equally to both partners.

Too often, men are praised for "helping" with housework. But helping implies that the responsibility belongs to someone else. It does not. Fathers are not babysitters. They are parents. Husbands are not assistants in the home. They are adults responsible for maintaining the household they live in.

Policies that Promote Equality: Lessons from Nordic Countries

Countries that have made the greatest progress on gender equality understood this long ago.

Across the Nordic countries, governments have introduced non-transferable paid paternity leave, often called the "father's quota", which fathers lose if they choose not to take it. Research from Sweden, Norway and Iceland shows that fathers who take parental leave remain more involved in childcare long after the leave ends. They spend more time with their children, share more household responsibilities and develop stronger bonds with their families. Studies have also found that fathers who take parental leave are more likely to remain engaged caregivers years later, helping to normalise shared parenting rather than treating fathers as occasional helpers.

Perhaps the most significant change has been cultural. In countries like Sweden, seeing fathers pushing prams, taking babies to medical appointments or staying home to care for newborns is entirely ordinary. A new term has been coined for them, “Latte Dads”.

They are not celebrated as exceptional fathers. They are simply expected to parent. Public policy has helped redefine fatherhood itself.

Reimagining a Country of Equal Opportunity & Equal Responsibility

That is the kind of shift that India requires too. We have had years of women being told to become better mothers and home makers, but it’s time that men take up the responsibility as well.

As former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern once said, "You can be ambitious and aspire to lead, or you can choose to have a family, or both. I don't think one excludes the other." Her words challenge the false choice that women are so often asked to make between professional ambition and family life.

Imagine how different the conversation would have been if the Governor had used her platform to tell young men that becoming an equal husband and an involved father is as important as becoming a successful professional. Imagine if graduating women had been told that they deserve partners who share the emotional, physical and mental labour of building a family. Imagine if both men and women had been reminded that equality begins not in boardrooms but around the dining table, in the kitchen, at school pick-ups and in the everyday work of raising children together.

That would have been a message worthy of a university convocation.

Women are not valuable because they become expert mothers. Nor should motherhood be the yardstick against which every woman's life is measured. Some women become mothers. Some do not. Some prioritise careers. Some prioritise family. Many choose both. None of these choices make them more or less complete.

The question India should be asking is not whether women can become expert mothers and successful professionals at the same time. Millions already do.

The real question is why we continue to expect them to carry both burdens alone.

Women are more than mothers. And men must become more than breadwinners. Only when caregiving, housework and ambition belong equally to both partners will we begin to build the equal society we so often claim to aspire to.