Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Coronavirus in India - 'PM Modi, Please Make Men Share Housework!' - BBC News
Coronavirus in India - 'PM Modi, Please Make Men Share Housework!' - BBC News
AD
Ad
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 1/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
In millions of middle class homes, the housework is delegated to the hired domestic help -
part-time cooks, cleaners and nannies. But what happens when the help can't come to work
because there is a nationwide lockdown?
The answer is friction and fighting - and in one unique case, a petition urging Prime Minister
Narendra Modi to intervene.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 2/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
"Does the handle of a jhadu (broom) come printed with the words: 'to be operated by women
only'?" asks the petition, published on change.org.
"What about the manual of the washing machine or gas stove? Then why is it that most men
are not doing their share of housework!"
The petition's author, Subarna Ghosh, who was fed up of cooking and cleaning and doing
laundry while trying to work from home, wants the prime minister "to address the issue in his
next speech" and to "encourage all Indian men to do an equal share of housework".
"It's a fundamental question, why don't more people talk about it?" she wrote.
Ms Ghosh's petition has gathered nearly 70,000 signatures - a reflection of the scale of
gender inequality in homes across India. According to an International Labour Organization
Her husband, a banker, was "not the type to help with housework", she said. Her teenage son
and daughter sometimes chip in.
Maybe later
Ms Ghosh, who runs a charity which works on reproductive justice, said the expectation that
she would be the one to compromise on work was much higher during the lockdown.
Why sign in to the BBC?
"My work suffered, at least in April, the first month of the lockdown. I was exhausted all the
time, I was tired every day. Our family dynamics changed. I definitely complained a lot. And
when I complained people said, 'Then don't do it'."
Ms Ghosh took their advice - for three days in early May, she didn't do any dishes or fold any
clothes.
"The sink was overflowing with unwashed dishes and the pile of laundry grew bigger and
bigger," she said.
Her husband and children realised how upset she was and they cleaned up the mess.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 3/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
"My husband has started helping me with chores. He understood I was very affected by it, that
it was bothering me a lot," she said. "But our men are also victims of this culture and society.
They have not been trained to do housework. They require a little bit of hand-holding."
That's because in India, as in many other patriarchal societies, girls are groomed from a
young age to be perfect homemakers. It is taken for granted that the housework is their
responsibility and if they went out and got themselves a job, they would just have to do
"double duty" - manage both home and work.
"As a child, it was always me who had to do house chores, work in the kitchen and help out
my mom," wrote one woman, Pallavi Sareen, when I asked friends and colleagues on
Facebook for their stories about division of labour. "My brother wouldn't even serve himself
lunch," she said.
According to an Oxfam report, Indian women and girls put in more than three billion hours of
unpaid care work daily. If it in
Why sign were assigned
to the BBC? a monetary value it would add trillions of rupees to
India's gross domestic product.
But in reality, the cost of housework is rarely calculated. It is seen as something a woman
does out of love.
Growing up, Ms Ghosh thought differently. She saw her mother and aunts do all the
housework and thought, "No way I'm going to be like that".
When she married, the fault lines over housework were partly hidden because of the
presence of domestic help, leading to a false sense of equality at home. "Domestic help also
helps maintain peace in our homes," she said. "The chores are taken care of and it seems all
is well."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 4/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
But the lockdown brought the family face-to-face with the daily drudgery of housework and
with the inequality that had been "shoved under the carpet".
"The lockdown made these chasms more glaring," Ms Ghosh said. "It also gave me an
opportunity to look it in the eye and lay it bare."
The women she spoke to in her neighbourhood said they were equally frustrated with
housework, but most found the idea that their husbands help around the house ludicrous.
"Many asked me, 'How can he cook or clean?' Many, in fact, praised their husbands for being
easy-going. They'd say, 'He's very nice, whatever I cook he eats without complaining'."
"When it's your own father, brother or husband, how do you question them? But the personal
best from the BBC
is political too - so I need to talk about it, but I also have to play the good wife."
When Ms Ghosh told her husband that she was starting a petition he was "very supportive",
she said. Sign in or Register
"His friends made fun of him. They asked him, 'Why didn't you just do some housework?
Look, now your wife has gone and petitioned Modi!'
Maybe later
"He took it on the chin," she said, laughing. "He told them, 'Because more men listen to Mr
Modi than their own wives'."
Why sign in to the BBC?
Ms Ghosh's petition was also criticised by a lot of people on social media. Many chided her for
bothering the prime minister with "a frivolous matter".
"Some people wrote to me saying Indian women need to do their housework. Yes we do, but
where are the men?"
"I'm hopeful," she said. "Mr Modi has a huge support base among women, so he should talk
about an issue that's important to women. When the rainy season started, he talked about
cough and cold, so why can't he talk about gender equality?"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 5/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
Related Topics
Sign
More on this storyin to get the
Coronavirus:best from
How India's lockdownthe
sparkedBBC
a debate over maids
6 May 2020
SignDesperate
Coronavirus in India: in or Register
migrant workers trapped in lockdown
22 April 2020
Maybe later
More Videos from the BBC
Recommended by Outbrain
Why sign in to the BBC?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 6/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
'It sounds as though 'We don’t marry black Woman takes selfie as
you're rather busy' people': South Asian anti- wild bear sniffs her hair
blackness
Sign
Elsewhere in
on BBC
Recommended by Outbrain
to get the
best from the BBC
Sign in or Register
Maybe later
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 7/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
Maybe later
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 8/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
Sign in or Register
Top Stories
Trump concedes coronavirus pandemic to 'get worse'
The president also asked all Americans to wear face coverings, saying they show "patriotism".
22 July 2020
22 July 2020
ADVERTISEMENT
Maybe later
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 10/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
Features
The photo that started a search for my slave roots
Feeling hot
Why
What happens to sign
your in tointhe
body BBC? heat?
extreme
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 11/12
7/22/2020 Coronavirus in India: 'PM Modi, please make men share housework!' - BBC News
On your mobile
On smart speakers
Worklife
Future
best from the BBC Travel
Culture
Music TV
Sign in or Register
Weather Sounds
Maybe later
Terms of Use About the BBC
Copyright © 2020 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our
approach to external linking.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53469696 12/12