An Australian woman who has been residing in India since 2023 sparked online fury after unloading her thoughts on the country’s work culture and Indian households’ serious dependence on domestic help.
Bree Steele, a podcast producer, shared her views in a viral video on Instagram, divulging how doing her own chores seems to be a foreign concept in India. “I don’t cook or clean in India. Chores? I don’t know them,” she said while drawing parallels with how such aspects of the daily routine were dealt with in the West. “Most middle class to wealthy households in India have house help. Most people have someone who does their cleaning, maybe their washing and cooking.”
She noted how accomplishing household chores like cleaning and cooking on top of full-time jobs is just part of one’s day in the West. “A friend of mine here told me it is just not feasible to do all the cleaning and cooking on your own,” she continued. “I was like, that is what we do in the west. We do everything with full-time jobs.”
But these comparisons didn’t just mean to create a divide India and Western countries, as she also took into account how Indians who had been roped into the corporate life end up working longer hours. Alluding to how she’s seen her friends here get work-related calls as late as 9:30 at night, she said, “There is no real work-life balance here.”
Steele then acknowledged that such a lifestyle barely left any time for corporate workers who may live on their own to engage in regular chores, which ultimately led to the excessive reliance on domestic help. “The expectatiosn on corporate workers are just so high that if you are single, of course you do not have time to do your own cooking and cleaning, and for better or worse, labour is cheap in India, so it makes sense that people rely on house help.”
SNS takes up arms against Australian woman’s views on Indian work culture and more
Her remarks regarding the “convenience” of not having to cook and clean on her own soon prompted a debate on social media.
A user, who had lived both in India and abroad, acknowledged they’d still pick the West over the former. “As some who grew up in India with the so called privileges and then moved to the west, and does all the chores, I’ll pick the west every single time. Despite the chores, I still have a LOT of spare time that I spend on my hobbies and health. Despite all the help in India, I lived an unhealthy and tired life,” they explained.
Another questioned the normalised outlook surrounding the lack of work-life balance: “Every comment’s mainly about the chores but no one’s picked up on the 0 work life balance. No questions raised on why the 9.30pm calls (it’s just assumed to be how life is lived).”
A third user argued that people in the West don’t actually cook from scratch. “Nobody in the Europe or America cooks from scratch, that too everyday to the extent that Indians do,” they wrote. “Most east outside, or the extent of ‘homemade’ cooking is boiling pasta and dumping in some readymade sauce.”