“There’s nothing women can’t do. There’s absolutely nothing we can’t do. We’re far stronger in a lot of ways than men. Way, way stronger than men”— Betty Williams, Nobel Peace Prize recipient (1976).
Women achievers are often quoted as making similar claims that nothing is impossible, elevating the gender to superhumanly stature. In reality, the forced imposition of the standards of perfection that women are expected to achieve is a mirage—that when chased, results in exhaustion and catastrophic ends. This chase of the mirage, the race for perfection is what has been addressed in Lies Our Mothers Told Us, with stories of real women and packed with facts by independent journalist and author Nilanjana Bhowmick. The book is not another feminist novel, but a hard-hitting fact-based exposure of how the Indian woman’s burden is carried from one generation to another.
“India’s middle-class women are reeling under the dual force of tradition and modernity. The two have dumped on them more expectations than they can handle, more fears than they can live with, and more sleepless nights than they care to admit—even to themselves… That’s the Indian woman’s burden,” writes Bhowmick.
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Magnifying the gaping gender equality gap in society, Bhowmick writes how despite social and economic advancements and more and more women moving toward having their own careers, equality is far from being achieved. From managing the household and children and taking care of the family along with being independent and having a successful career, women do it all, often with unimaginable ease. But what seems fine on the surface has a deep mental and emotional impact on their wellbeing with exhaustion and anxiety becoming a part of their lives.
“A vast majority of modern Indian middle-class women suffer from the ‘superwoman syndrome’, a term coined in the 1980s…When we say there’s nothing that women can’t do, what we actually mean is that women should do everything which translates to paid and unpaid work and some emotional labour as a bonus,” writes the author as she lays bare the often unseen struggle that women go through in their daily lives.
The author recalls how her mother was taunted by her brother-in-law for buying herself a fancy purse in the flush of her first job. “We will talk when your job destroys your family and your daughters turn out to be wasters,” he had remarked. However, what kept her going was the support of the other women in her joint family set-up who took care of her children or cooked while she was at work. This support system, writes Bhowmick, crashed with the breakdown of the joint family system. In the neutral set-up, women had to do it all alone while managing their careers or pay another woman to help her with the chores.
Narrating anecdotes of her grandmother (who died by suicide), her mother (who struggled to be independent while also struggling to manage her family) and her own self, she outlines how the choice between having a family and a career has haunted women from time immemorial, often resulting in scars that last for a lifetime. “Ever since I turned forty, I have been waking up between 2 and 3 am every day,” she writes, explaining the anxiety that working women go through to carry out their responsibilities.
Recalling her past days, the author shares how she could wake up at 12 pm because her mother woke up at 4 am and prepared meals and catered to the family and that now, like her mother, she lives with the feeling of running out of time and has not had a good sleep in years.
In writing the book, the author has made the reader aware of the stark realities that are almost never talked of, behind the seemingly improving condition of women in the country—how girls pull out of school to help their mothers in household work, poor hygiene and facilities in government schools for girls, lack of support system for working women by the state, lack of familial support for working-married women, unequal distribution of household chores and the pressure to prioritise family before work.
Nilanjana Bhowmick’s work is a reminder of the gender gap in society. It screams out a question that no one asks: as we progress, are we doing enough to make the world a better place for women? It prods the government to wake up and provide the support that women need. It is an eyeopener for every family with a woman—working or not—to share the responsibilities and to let go of the bias.
Lies Our Mothers Told Us: The Indian Woman’s Burden
Nilanjana Bhowmick
Rupa Publications
Pp 272, Rs 699
