If it isn’t paid, it won’t be respected?

If it isn’t paid, it won’t be respected?

This article has been written to show our regard for all the housewives around the world aka all-time workforce working for their family and getting nothing in return.

Have you come across the constant stream of shame on the faces of the children when they introduce their mothers as ‘housewives’? Have any of us bothered seeing the scars of humiliation that we leave on our mothers by calling them as housewives with a tone that is filled with sympathy and exclaimed with an “ohh!”

Rashi Mittal, a mother of two children, lead a comfortable life in the city of Lucknow but she has more to share with us; the lack of self-esteem for the job she does is a reality she can’t avoid and thus wished to share.

“I often come across sentences like- Oh, my mom is just a housewife or she doesn’t work, stays at home and the worst ones like you don’t know things because you don’t earn,” Rashi told us.  The words like ‘just’, ‘doesn’t work’ and don’t know things’ etc. is something that has become a way of treatment for any housewife in our country. Family members or the friend circle with a sense of casualty can just say this and move on. But how austerely all of these gestures dampen our mothers, daughters and wives is un-understandable by those who merely pass a comment.

Be it a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer working in top firms of the world or be it any other high- profile profession one is into, one signs up to work for limited number of hours each day with a day off once a week compulsorily. But what do our home-makers get in return of willfully choosing to stay at home and working day in and day out for those who go out to either study or to earn the bread.

“I am DU graduate and was working as a mathematics teacher in Delhi before I got married. But then because my mother-in-law wanted a grandchild, I had to stay at home. So I gave up my job and began taking care of the house. Although I am strong advocate of women being financially independent but what’s wrong with being a housewife?” Rashi said during the interview.

Taken for granted, assumed to be less competent, asked to stay away from business matters etc. is what happens when a lady quits her job, her career and her aspirations to live up to the basic requirements of other family members. She loses her self-esteem.

A high percentage of men carry this conception that the women who stay at home, take cake of mainly three things- sit at home, supervise the maid servants and attend kitty parties, leading an easy life.

But are these men blind to what all they do when they are not sitting back or attending kitty parties? Are they partially receptive to things and see only what they want to? Somewhere I believe that if men or kids have chosen to blind themselves from what we do, then it is now our responsibility to make sure that we get what we deserve, not as sympathy but as our right.

Home-makers, domestic engineers or social workers are some of the other trending terms used to define what a housewife is. Will using a fancy term get the respect they deserve? Till the time our mothers, daughters or wives who are housewives do not recognize and realize that what they do is worth equivalent respect as other professions, no one else will do the same.

We, at the earliest, should come out from the shadow of being someone’s Mrs. and create our identity yet being the same HO– USEWIFE which we were earlier. We need to respect ourselves. All it demands is a change in insight, outlook and approach. What do you say?

 

 

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About the Author: This article is contributed by Apurva Mittal, our intern.

Also read: ‘To Every Man Who Never Called Himself A Feminist’ By Kendra Urdang

Ishita Kapoor

Ishita Kapoor

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