Dhritimoni Mahanta

The world has been at stake since the last three months, and we all know what we are dealing with. Probably this is most likely going to be a part of our life if the scientists and researchers fail to develop a remedy for this unanticipated global pandemic. However, at this hour of crisis it is important to be peaceful at the first place and learn living with this pandemic which may very well be our companion for the next couple of months or may be for a few years. Surviving these months within the four walls of the house has been the toughest time for most of us, and this has affected us both physically and mentally. But thankfully internet and social media has saved us a bit from the otherwise solitary confinement.

Owing to that boon, the other day while I was scrolling through my newsfeed, I happened to come across a few interesting illustrations published in an issue of The Guardian. The illustrations were basically gender comic by an artist named Emma. Those illustrations were expanded in and around the themes of gender wars and were so thought provokingly developed, that it instantly attracts the attention of the on lookers. I was really intrigued by those which eventually left me thinking of what I would have never thought otherwise. Emma, the artist apparently talked of the mental load, a responsibility nearly borne by every woman while finding liberty with ones partners and ones work and how it has been holding them back at work and in life.

The mental load which she talked of is what each one of us is dealing with every day, to be precise, the females who are mostly married bearing children. And how directly or indirectly it affects the overall participation in the higher studies or in the broader sense while matching up with the world. This mental load has in one way or the other holds us back from achieving what we want and we actually seek. These days have been very tough for working women and also homemakers; as it always has been. Their work from home schedule has to be well coordinated with the households and the homemakers are mostly seen living the busiest of their lives taking care of everyone in the household who could otherwise find a little time of self seclusion. If not all, many of them has been busy providing timely meals to their children and better halves who are apparently busy with their online chores, notwithstanding the value of efforts the homemakers have been putting into. I am totally not in a gendered war finding faults of one gender or the other. All of us are carrying different mental loads based on our position in society and the stand we take. For instance if a mother is busy with her work from home at the back of the mind she is thinking of hundred other chores she got to tackle as soon as her work ends and by the time she ends up doing few of them few more comes up. This then leads to frustration of having none to help her with her chores or may be the feeling that no matter how far you progress with your studies or your job, you end up being the sole proprietor of household chores. All we need at this point is cooperation or a helping hand intending to point the one always showing sheer negligence to the household chores assuming it to be solely the work of the females. We often see them enjoying their leisurely hours with a cup of tea and are otherwise seen apparently busy with the newspaper or their androids if at all while the other one is seen dealing with their to do lists keeping aside their well deserved leisurely pursuit. Nurturing and feeding is not a duty attached to women since birth, it is the societal construct which assigned us with it. As much as we try to analyze our to-do lists, working hours, the timely project submissions, household chores and the innumerable no of invisible work we tackle everyday; that invisible work is always the one hidden and undermined. And we call the invisible work as the mental load. It can be equally time consuming and brain storming like any other work but are less focused upon as they mostly remain hidden under official works. The constant pressure of remembering every little thing related to the household is what pushes women to the verge of losing the little of what they own.

Delving deep this brings me to the French feminist Simon de Beauvoir’s work “The Second Sex” (1949) where she analyses that a woman’s education too often led her to feel torn between choosing freedom and choosing love. If education fails to inculcate the actual idea of liberation in the minds of the readers it has surely failed against the patriarchy. The patriarchal mindset has spread its roots far and wide making it difficult for the educators to incorporate the idea that it’s not about choosing between freedom and love, but choosing freedom with love. One has to build oneself capable of functioning within the system till the system itself alters keeping in mind the equal rights which each one of us deserves. We are strong enough to carry forward our dreams and ambitions all for ourselves. We also are entrusted will the responsibility of reminding the other gender that equality is what we all seek and what we all need. Equality in all the fields of life be it home, workplace, schools and colleges and so on and so forth. Although in terms of physicality we may not be at par with the male counterparts but we are capable of sharing the same baggage mentally and socially. It is equally important for them to help us accelerate by providing us with enough avenues and adequate assistance in whatever ways possible. It is the matter of solidarity and we feeling rather than dependence and vulnerability. In this world where we are yet to demystify the label of otherness imposed on us it is important to make education a principal tool to eradicate the stigma of binaries that we are very often subjected to. In my opinion we are empowered enough to fights with all the odds to secure ourselves a place to question the gendered structure. We must stand united and work with twice the enthusiasm to achieve what we all deserve. We work, we love, and we make ourselves heard.