The Multitasking Woman - #ChooseToChallenge

The theme for International Women’s Day 2021 is #ChooseToChallenge and I would like to challenge the concept of the multitasking woman, as the image below shows.

No, the multitasking woman is not a myth, she is a reality that exists in all our lives. We are her.

On Women’s Day we send each other encouraging messages of love and kindness. A dear friend, Tarannum Ara, posted a picture of a multitasking woman on one of her social media platforms and said: “Let’s stop glorifying the everyday struggle of women on Women’s Day. We do not have a choice to opt out of these responsibilities unlike men. It’s exhausting to be a woman in the artwork here”.

This rings very true. As women we are proud of all that we can do and accomplish but we fail to acknowledge or do not want to accept the toll this takes on us – because we always put others before us (or the society demands and expects this from us).

Women are forced to play too many roles at home, such as the housemaid, the mother, the nurse, the working professional, the perfect lover and more, within the limited 24-hours of any day. I have heard horrifying stories of how unrecognised household work alienates a woman from her male partner/spouse – because her reality is very different from his. Very few women find support – mental, physical or work wise and this is very sad indeed.

Yes, this is a burden women are forced to carry because no one else will do it. In the process of managing everything we end up neglecting ourselves and our skills. We also do not get the same opportunities to learn new things as our male partners/spouses might. My husband sometimes jokingly says men know everything and I say yes that might be true about certain things, and it is because our male counterparts get more opportunities to learn and grow.

For example, when a man gets married, in the workplace, he is viewed as someone who is responsible and hence may get opportunities to grow professionally. When a woman gets married, she is viewed in the exact opposite manner and runs the risk of being molly-coddled by her colleagues. Same difference in attitudes can be seen towards men who are fathers and women who are mothers. Because of how patriarchal the world is, our male partners/spouses do not feel responsible for many things that women are forced to be responsible for, whether we like it or not and if we want to or not. The world freely takes advantage of our emotional intelligence and does not even empower us to fight back.

Women are forced to fill many roles at home, work and many other spaces and if women choose not to fill these roles, there is a vacuum. Men can help fill the vacuum but are they motivated enough to do this? Life is easier for a male partner/spouse if their main responsibility is their job that pays them and if their only responsibility is to “bring home the bacon”. They are unlikely to do work that does not pay them, such as cleaning, washing, taking care of their own children, cooking, housekeeping and more. They rather be oblivious and live in that oblivion than pick up a broom or care for a sick child. It is the ugly truth about this world, and we are not yet fully aware of what this means for the mental and emotional wellbeing of women.

Are any of the statistics around women’s physical and mental health surprising? What can we do as women to start pushing back and start handing over some of our burdens to our male partners/spouses? Here are a few helpful resources that we can start incorporating in our everyday conversations with people we live with and ask for more help.

1. How to Set Healthy Boundaries: 10 Examples + PDF Worksheets
2. 10 Way to Build and Preserve Better Boundaries
3. Setting Emotional Boundaries in Relationships
4. Why Setting Boundaries is the Ultimate Self-Care

This is why, I #ChooseToChallenge the image of the super, multitasking woman. Let us help her by either taking away or sharing some of the responsibilities she is burdened with.

How are you going to empower the women in your home? Share your ideas and thoughts by adding a comment. Thank you!