The price of her liberation
Laila clocks out from her office at 5pm., but her second shift begins now. This is the capitalist bargain for the modern woman. The system needed more workers for its machine. It encouraged women to leave their homes, and this was sold as liberation. In reality, it was a raw deal. Capitalism wanted women’s paid labour in the office, but treated their unpaid labour at home as worthless. The promise of empowerment became a trap of double duty.
Her day had started hours before the office, waking at 5 a.m. to make breakfast, get her children and husband ready for the day, and clear the previous night’s mess. Now, when she reaches home by 6, tired from her commute, she cannot afford to sit. She makes tea, checks on the children, and starts preparing dinner. After feeding her family and eating herself, she cleans the kitchen, irons clothes for the next day, and rarely finds her bed before midnight. This relentless cycle of unpaid labour is the real price of her ‘liberation’.
In Pakistan, the weight of unpaid work falls heavily on women. Data show a stark divide: men spend just 17 minutes a day on household chores and nine minutes on caregiving. Women, by contrast, devote 231 minutes to chores and 55 minutes to caregiving daily. According to UN Women, for every hour a Pakistani man spends on unpaid work, a woman spends eleven — one of the largest gaps in the world.
This immense contribution keeps the country running, but because it is unpaid, it is excluded from economic measures like GDP. The result is that women are left with little time for jobs, education, or rest. This daily reality reinforces gender inequality across the nation.
This double shift is a systemic design, not a personal failing. The structures that once made large households manageable were dismantled — they were inefficient for capitalism. The joint family kept people rooted and shared resources. Capitalism needed mobile nuclear units. Each new household meant more consumers buying separate appliances and packaged food. The community vanished. The shared kitchen and childcare disappeared. A collective effort became a solitary burden. A woman in Pakistan today struggles to run a home for her husband and two children, while her grandmother managed a household of eight with relative ease because the responsibilities were shared.
The country needed economic growth, and more female workers were a way to achieve it. However, it failed to build the supporting infrastructure. Public childcare is a fantasy. Safe transport is a joke. The cost of her participation was loaded onto her. Her unpaid work feeds the current workforce and raises the next one. This work subsidises the entire economy. It holds no value in the capitalist ledger.
Her life is a never-ending struggle, a silent war waged on two fronts: the office and the home. The system not only profits from her exhaustion but from the total collapse of her well-being. It sells her shallow solutions to the profound problems it creates — stress medication to manage the anxiety, sleeping pills for the insomnia born from relentless overwork. Binge-watching becomes a necessary escape. Retail therapy offers a fleeting illusion of control, while convenience foods fill stomachs but empty wallets, replacing the nourishment of a home-cooked meal she has no time to prepare.
The true cost, however, is extracted in a currency far more valuable than money. It is paid in the guilt of neglected children whose needs are met with a distracted presence. It is paid in the cold silences and bitter resentments that erode a marriage, as a partnership becomes a transaction of shared exhaustion. It is paid in the nagging dread of anxiety, the crushing weight of fatigue, and the depression that sets in when there is no end in sight.
When this fragile structure inevitably cracks, her failure is branded as personal weakness. But her struggle is not a lack of resilience. It is the logical, predictable result of a system that demands everything from her and offers nothing in return but a faster pace in a race she never agreed to run.
The pressure is extreme. Cultural expectations cement her as the primary caregiver. Her salary is often too meagre to hire help. A maid is a luxury. A cook is a dream. She becomes both, plus a launderer and a nurse. Studies show working women in Pakistan suffer high rates of depression and anxiety. This is not a mental health crisis; it is a crisis of social design. Her body and mind are paying the price.
The solution is not to be more efficient. It is to challenge the value system that treats their unpaid labour as a free resource. This requires moving beyond rhetoric to transformative action: policies like mandatory, non-transferable paternal leave to force a sharing of domestic duties, and serious state investment in childcare to lift the burden from individual families. It requires a fundamental cultural shift where men in every home become true partners, not just helpers.
This model of shared responsibility is powerfully demonstrated in Scandinavia. In Sweden, a “use-it-or-lose-it” leave policy for fathers has reshaped family life, while Denmark’s state-funded childcare and shorter work weeks make well-being a national goal. But this progressive thinking is not confined to wealthy nations. In fact, low- and middle-income countries are also leading the way in supporting their female populations. In South America, Uruguay has established a comprehensive national care system, recognising childcare as a national responsibility. Similarly, in Africa, Rwanda has made early childhood development and paid maternity leave a key part of its national policy, proving that a commitment to gender equity is a choice, not a privilege of wealth.
The working woman’s resilience is not a symbol of national strength; it is a measure of systemic failure. The machine is broken. It is time to stop expecting her to be the shock absorber for a nation’s dysfunction. For the sake of its 52 per cent — and for the health of the entire country — Pakistan must finally build a system that values care as much as commerce. The alarm has been ringing for decades. How much longer must women wait for their country to wake up? Must we wait for a bloody socialist revolution to see the establishment of state-sponsored childcare, care for the elderly, community daycare centres, and shared communal services that would lift this crushing burden? The solutions are known and practical; what is lacking is the collective will to implement them.
Sources: ILO (WOW360, 2023), WISE (2024), ProPakistani (2023), UN Women (Express Tribune, 2019), PIDE (2023), CDPR (2024)
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer
The writer is a freelance contributor