Women's Rage

 Invisible labour, invisible load. 

Women and the mental load, unpaid labour, exhaustion and rage all with the ever present, imminent threat of violence thus constant vigilance.

This post is harder to write. It is so personal, and so ubiquitous. I have been discussing this in some form or the other for over two decades ever since my peers and I entered the workforce. Although there were ever-present calls on our leisure even in girlhood, and need for constant vigilance all our lives the disproportionate unpaid labour, mental load, the mental and physical exhaustion, and accumulated rage became constant on having to work as well as put in hours of unpaid, unacknowledged domestic labour.

Paris Paloma's song "Labour" is more an anthem for us women than a popular, viral backgorund score for reels.

"All day everyday therapist, mother, maid."...Sing it sister!

See also this op-ed from Ashoka University's Sumana Roy in the Delhi edition of The Indian Express: 

The sub-stack "Swarna's mumblecore" has a very insightful piece "Why brown daughters don't burn the house down." It echoes and emphasizes the impotent fury and constraints on us "brown daughters" who don't give in to the feminist rage to burn it all down and re-build a feminist world. It also shows how the domestic labour and invisible load is particularly invisible even to girls and women intergenerationally and within the family.

 

 

While the following image I have shared from a talk by Seema Kulkarni on Reporting on Climate & Gender: A Rural Perspective, shared in my blog post "Women Farmers & the Burden of Unpaid Labour" on 5 April 20206, its a disproportionate statistic that repeats across classes, across salary scales, across urban and rural regions and across borders. Gender is the only constant. 

 

 As reports continue to flood media in all its forms of unchecked and mostly fatal violence and sexual violence against women and girls in public with impunity the rage bubbles forth more often. 

In the translated captions of Chinese vertical form micro dramas, there is a repeated line calling for women to vent their frustrations and rage out load so as to avoid developing "breast cancer" or "lumps in the breast." The link between autoimmune conditions and unexpressed rage and  unprocessed trauma is scientifically documented. Internalization of rage, the stigma associated with women expressing rage and social conditioning of frustrating gender roles as well as the need for constant vigilance overextends our nervous systems, pushes our hormones out of whack and repeatedly manifested silent, suppressed rage as depression, exhaustion and autoimmune conditions in women.

Patriarchy's Biggest Open Secret: Weaponized Incompetence 

 A powerful point is made in the following movie review, when the reviewer talks about the Netflix Crime Comedy's Maa Behan  [Mother Sister] being ahead of its time and bashed by audiences (from 8 mins 43 seconds) in this Tried & Refused Productions video "5 Powerful Bollywood Movies Unfairly Treated by the Audience" That of the toll/tax to patriarchy where competent and extraordinary women compromise and accept the most mediocre of men just for the safety offered from belonging to a man: Someone's mother, sister or wife.

The content from digital creators Rachael Kliendienst's "Women in Charge" series [now (23 July 2026) up to a month in charge] and Tara Joon's "Grandma's Advice" (141 reels) clearly demonstrate through overemphasis on the competence and constraints on women and how far we can go if those constraints were lifted. The obvious and self-evident solutions that get overlooked in the patriarchal system. 

 

Status Update - Day 5: Women in Charge

 

 It's actually a win-win if  Gender Equality the 5th Global Goal (Sustainable Development Goal - SDG 5) is made central to the development roadmaps. For now most action plans that centre the "Women, Peace & Security" agenda is more elaborate plans and policies rather than ground reality. 

Source: Asian College of Journalism - Climate Media Hub: Reporting on Climate and Gender.

Lost opportunity for a better world ... a major  loss when the direct link between the education levels of girls and women and the development potential of a nation is highlighted.  

Dr Kate Adams on Education of Women as development predictor:

Yet there are so many barriers to education, opportunity and financial independence of women. The rage persists.

Women Farmers & the Burden of Unpaid Labour

 

Easter is a time of hope just as is the election season. As one reflects on what is needed to make women and girls rise and thrive in this the season of the Risen Son who suffered so that we could all thrive, one thing stands out. Unpaid labour drags down women and girls in general and women farmers in particular. It affects lives, health and livelihood drastically.

Being liberated from the cross of unpaid labour can ensure that women and society can thrive. 

On World Water Day (March 22), many organizations had shared how the lack of access to clean water and sanitation adds immensely to the burden of unpaid work for women. This leads to many social evils such as early marriage, child marriage and polygamy - water wives or "pani bai". 

The Cross of Unpaid Labour

According to "Unpaid Work and Women Workers: A Growing Crisis," the report published in December 2023 of a survey conducted by the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), New Delhi, across Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and Delhi of 2,500 women:

“Women workers continue to bear the lion’s share of domestic and care responsibilities, and to the extent that this work is shared, it is often shared not with spouses but with girl children. … are often overworked and exhausted - and bearing the mental and physical costs of such overwork. … the sheer scale at which work beyond the agreed upon informal or formal contract - i.e., unpaid work - is extracted from women workers even in paid contracts. Even more shockingly, this also applied to government works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act [MGNREGA now renamed Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin): VB-G RAM G]."

This crisis affects women in the agricultural sector almost disproportionately high. 

Source: Presentation by Seema Kulkarni, Asian College of Journalism Climate Change Media Hub's "Climate Change Conversations," online media education session on "Reporting on Climate and Gender: A Rural Perspective." March 27, 2026.

Improving access to services will in itself reduce the burden of unpaid labour that eats into the time, health and lives of women in general and poor, rural women and women farmers and farm labourers in particular.

As the ISS report puts it, 

"time spent by women on unpaid care work is the availability and quality of publicly provisioned services, amenities and basic infrastructure. Typically poorer settlements esp in developing countries are plagued with inadequate access to proper pucca housing, drinking water, fuel, food, healthcare, creches, support for the elderly, food security, and so on. The absence of these facilities is subsidised by the drudgery of unpaid self-exploitative care work, a result of the patriarchal gender-based division of labour wherein the responsibility for care and family survival is the woman’s domain."

Thus better access to piped water, sanitation - #SDG6, affordable cooking fuel (most relevant in April 2026 in view of the fuel crisis as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran that has affected global fuel supplies as well as the global supply chain increasing prices all around.), clean energy (decentralized solar providing electricity to informal and rural settlements ensuring security) - #SDG7, anganwadis (child care), primary health centres - #SDG3GoodHealthAndWellBeing, affordable food (functional and corruption free ration shops) - #SDG2ZeroHunger as well as support for elder care and patient care within the family will ensure women and girls can have time and space to thrive. This is true empowerment and Gender Equality (#SDG5) in our mostly patriarchal homes. 

When women and girls in general and women farmers in particular are provided access to such functional social security and safety net they thrive.  

In election season, ensuring these services to the women electorate is a better poll promise than the freebies and "biryani-alcohol" packages to male voters.