Apna time … aya .. gaya .. kaha? The losing race against time

Ramya gets up, it is her big day. She wants some quiet time, she wants to gather her thoughts, she wants to live her BIG DAY - her way.

And then the landslide begins with her first chore. The “half asleep” requests of her family to sleep a little more, the “I worked late last night leave me alone” privilege of her husband. And Ramya can see her obstacle race to her BIG moment, getting complex.

The dominoes of the delay starts with one task crashing into the next. Repeated wake-up calls crashing in to almost missing garbage disposal, crashing in to mental math of recalculating the switching on of the geyser, crashing into the breakfast execution, crashing into last minute variations to the breakfasts, crashing into the crankiness of the finally awakened. Crashing into “getting ready” to face the world, crashing into mental calculations on finding the fastest route to destination, crashing into finding the patience and love to not yell at the reluctant wakers, so they brace the harsh world with an uncrumpled spirit.

As Ramya nears her BIG moment, she seems more exhausted than enthusiastic, she seems more ruffled-up than excited. As she reaches her destination her restlessness bubbles up into a “something important” she forgot!

Her BIG moment arrives, she is more pre-occupied about the “something important” forgotten. She is torn-up in a conflict of judging herself selfish for having forgotten the “something important” and trying to stay in the moment of “her glory”.

She struggles with the question - “is it worth it”? She remembers the words of a wise (older) woman “ you can never have it all”. Yet the problem-solver in her does not stop. Going back and forth her planning and wondering, where did she go wrong? How come she forgot “something important”. How else could she do this better? Forgetting that it was not her plan that went wrong it was the execution which involved the others who didn’t follow the plan that let to the “something important” being forgotten.

Yet Ramya continues to wonder, while trying to stay in the present. “How else? What more?" She reaches home, with a prepared apology speech intended towards the person, whose “something important” she had forgotten. And as she stepped in another Tsunami of chores descended on her, she again undermined the role/lack of time.

Ramya did not want to fail twice in the same day, she picked up where she had left off. She was determined to get through what was left of the day as efficiently as possible. She attended to last minute requests, she got dinner started, she got others to finish their end of day tasks and she once again planned, she planned with a hope filled heart and complex excel sheet in her mind that tomorrow will be a new day, a better day a more efficient day. When she will not forget “something important”.

As she ended her day and faced undistracted the disturbances in her body and mind. The dull aches hidden in familiar spaces of her body begged her for attention. The nagging thoughts of incompleteness, inadequacy, half-heartedness and again the wisdom of the old woman “you cannot have it all”. Ramya fades into these disturbances.

Is Ramya’s day every woman’s day? A race against time?

Global to Local, the research findings state the fact that women work longer (double burden) and have less leisure (time poverty). The patriarchal tendencies in India both intensify and normalize the problem of “double burden” and “time poverty”, by making discrimination invisible and calling it "socio-cultural - traditions".

Let's take a deeper look:

1) UN Women:

“….From cooking and cleaning….. taking care of children and the elderly, women carry out at least two and a half times more unpaid household and care work than men"

As a result, they have less time to engage in paid labour, or work longer hours, combining paid and unpaid labour.”

2) OECD Development Centre:

“…..women …. spend an important part of their day on meeting the expectations of their domestic and reproductive roles. This is in addition to their paid activities, thus creating the “double burden” of work for women..”

(Unpaid Care Work: The missing link in the analysis of gender gaps in labour outcomes, Ga?lle Ferrant, Luca Maria Pesando and Keiko Nowacka, https://www.oecd.org/dev/development-gender/Unpaid_care_work.pdf)

IIMA study:

Women in the working age category of 15 to 60 years spend 7.2 hours on unpaid domestic work compared to 2.8 hours spent by men, indicating they have "time poverty"…

(https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/women-spend-7-2-hours-on-unpaid-domestic-work-compared-to-2-8-hours-spent-by-men-iima-profs-research/articleshow/97837422.cms)

3) Nature magazine: The Indian scenario upclose

“….the incidence of unpaid domestic activities is much higher in the 25–34 age group, … the social custom that women must take care of their families; hence, most of the women after marriage adopt home care as the permanent unpaid job. Further, the patriarchal tendency of naming a woman as a housewife is very common among the Indian households … which restricts her decision about entering the economic activities in the labor market, thereby legitimizing unpaid domestic duty as the destiny…..”

(Unfolding unpaid domestic work in India: women’s constraints, choices, and career, Pushpendra Singh & Falguni Pattanaik, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0488-2)

The impact of “double burden” and “time poverty” on women mental health: Stress, anxiety, depression and fatigue.

Women who lack the financial means are often burdened by repetitive, time consuming, and physically demanding domestic tasks.?This drudgery component may cause substantial fatigue and stress, whereas the relational component of unpaid work, such as playing with children, may be stress reducing and fulfilling.

Stress activates the release of neurohormones, including cortisol. Sustained high cortisol levels may partially explain some adverse mental health outcomes, including depression, in women doing unpaid care work.

For women, higher levels of objective stress may also translate into higher levels of perceived stress (burden and role strain) compared with men. Moreover, the cognitive and emotional involvement and the lack of respite (eg, time for leisure, communication with partners or friends, and self-care) from unpaid work can eventually lead to physical and emotional distress, depression, and anxiety.

Aprilcares' self-awareness activity

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