But the job inside the home only and always comprises of doing all the domestic chores, maintaining and running the house, taking care of the family, the elderly, the ailed, the babies. And, yes, none of these pay direct money to women, they still have to depend on the breadwinner, which “should be” the men of the family.
Whereas, what are the jobs outside home? Well, to start with, all of them are paid. And, the most surprising thing is you can choose your career there. If you want, you can be a firefighter, if you want, you can be a stuntman, you can be a banker, you can be a police, a mafia, a prime minister, a president, a cult-leader, a cobbler, a programmer, a salesman. There are millions of options, and you can optimize your pay there, yes, although there’s a factor of class and community etc., but you still have a very large chance (compared to the women who are indoctrinated to be homemakers) to get money, power, connection and success there. You can choose a work that you like, or, at least don’t hate, you can choose to gain more skill, to be an expert, to earn more money.
Secondly, every homemaker women are advised to adjust to their husbands’ earning. But regardless of their husbands’ earning, all the women are culturally expected to provide all the following: Sex and care to the husband at demand, managing the entire household, giving birth to babies, take care of babies, the husbands’ family (or, at least, the husband and the kids), elderly, ailing etc.. Women are also expected to doll themselves up for the husband, be as good looking as possible (otherwise understand their husband having other affairs and flings, damn, even if they are beautiful themselves, then also they are told to understand the husbands’ affairs, because apparently it’s men’s nature to be whores, just that they are not called whores, they are called manly men), adjust her lifestyle to his demand, improve and maintain his social standing and connection, tolerate his mood and mood swings, be his punching bag, be his shoulder to rest and cry, everything. And, these demands and expectations don’t change based on the husbands’ earnings: If he earns x dollars a year, then also his wife should provide all these things, and if he earns x/1000 dollar a year, then also the wife is expected to provide the same. Another weird thing is the poor men’s wives often work harder than the rich men’s wives, while the rich men’s wives get more perks than the poor men’s wives. So, what kind of system is this? And, oh, for women, it’s not called providing, it’s women’s duties, as taught by cultures, religions, and political leaders. It’s something apparently women can do to make themselves a bit more useful (even if you calculate the market value of all these unpaid works women are asked to perform, crosses their men’s entire earning 99% of the times, that too, when the market also hugely undervalue these “women’s jobs”). And, oh, not to forget, the women who demand their husbands be rich, if they want their wives to perform all these “wifely duties” are called gold-diggers. The women demanding pay for their domestic and care jobs are compared with “sex-workers” for some weird reason.
Then for the jobs outside, there’s many coverages like weekend leaves, holiday leaves, sick leaves, retirement, retirement payment, labor laws etc. etc. etc. (yet again, not all of these are available to all the people working outside home, but at least some of these are available for everyone). But where are these coverages for the women working inside home? In holiday and weekends, when everyone else in the home is relaxing and enjoying, the women in the family (mainly the wife in a nuclear family and the daughter-in-laws or widow daughters in a traditional joint family) are working harder than a normal day supplying the food, beverages for enjoyment and family and friend union. In most families, if women get bed-ridden even for a few days, or, go out with their friends and family a bit, visit their parents’ home etc., the family members start expressing unhappiness, often they mentally abuse the women, if not force her back to serving them immediately. The women often don’t have a say whether they want to have sex or not, when they want to, when they don’t, women’s incomparable pain and health risk issues during period and pregnancy are mostly not taken into account, there’s not near to enough medical remedy to assist women with these pain, on the contrary, people, state, religious leaders, politicians largely snatch away women’s bodily autonomy, banning abortions (but back-alley abortion at the men and the family’s will are full on business, these “pro-life” people are not pro-life, neither for women nor for the babies), even tabooing medically assisted birth etc. But when a woman gives birth, everyone would come to visit the baby, she has to tolerate everyone at that state of her health, she even has to supply food and beverages, keep the baby cute an pretty and yes, keep them from crying, all dolled up for the family and friends. If a child cries, behaves “rudely” (open to interpretation) to others, bring bad marks, have health issue, everything is the mom’s fault somehow. A woman can’t even have their reproductive ability stopped (by surgery etc.) without popping out 2–3 babies or without their husbands’ or fathers’ “permission”. Like wtf are all these? Women in nuclear families and women who have only daughters don’t ever get anything similar to retirement in their entire life. They work till they die. The husbands would spend everyday as a holiday after their retirement and still often get paid by their former employers, while the wives will be on call for tea, snack, breakfast, lunch and dinner, for cleaning the house, washing the clothes, doing the dishes, buying grocery, medicine, everything. The women having sons are taken inside the patriarchal cycle and are gifted daughters from other families who would come to their house marrying their sons and would be culturally bound to take care of the household as asked by the mother-in-laws; they will be told to give birth to boys if they want to enjoy later in life like their mother-in-laws (as if the gender is determined by women’s sex chromosomes) and hence this vicious cycle of patriarchy will go on. Women are pitted against other women from their generation, competing for rich and/or good husbands, good matrimonial families, the husbands’ attention etc. etc. etc., women from one generation are pitted against women from their sons’ generation with fear about what biatchy witch would lure their sons, or, what biatchy controlling mommy will control their husbands, and women fighting these futile fights against one another can’t see or don’t have enough time to see how they are being tricked into these fights while the patriarchal system is going on controlling everything.
Then there are religious leaders, powerful businessmen, dictators, power-hungry, control-freak and manipulative politicians, “cultural” terrorists, actual cults and cults in the guise of science etc. dictating gender roles, gender essentialism. There are so many women enforcing all these nonsense and we still don’t have a full proof way to deal with these women without harming women empowerment. There is the insufferable grip of benevolent patriarchy saying patriarchy is apparently the natural way of human civilization, their proof? Well, nothing, just their gut feeling. There are these “common sense” people who talk no common sense btw, and are just full of bigotry. Then there is the fear, hopelessness and lack of critical thinking among women (and people in general) too, who think demanding more rights will do no good but only endanger their existing rights and peace in life; but never think giving up their rights in the face of attack is endangering their rights and lives even more. And lastly, there’s some weird folks saying what will happen even if you attain gender equality etc.? All those can be reversed, and there will always be people and forces working towards reversing that. So, why even fight? These weirdos never think rights are always earned and kept by fighting, nobody gives them to you just like that, or, nobody safekeeps your rights for you if you don’t fight. No system goes on just by itself, it’s always people who maintain those. Patriarchy as a system too is always oiled and maintained by a collection of powerful, cultish and manipulated people, it’s not going on just by itself.
So, everything together, is further enforcing these illogical, impractical, unnatural “gender-roles”. Continuous fight and mass awareness is the only way staying out of these traps. I hope we do our part and largely keep on succeeding.