Context

• The discourse on women’s empowerment in India has long been entangled with political agendas, cultural ideologies, and economic structures.
• In recent years, particularly under the current regime, the rhetoric of nari shakti (women’s power) and women-led development has gained prominence in public narratives.
• Yet, beneath this rhetorical veneer lies a glaring contradiction: the persistent neglect and devaluation of women’s lives and labour within the domestic sphere.

Rhetoric versus Reality

• The invocation of women’s empowerment by political leaders often stands in stark contrast to regressive positions on issues central to women’s autonomy.
• The statement by the RSS chief in August 2025, urging families to have at least three children for the survival of civilization, exemplifies this contradiction.
• Here, women are reduced to instruments of reproduction, with little recognition of their agency.
• Such remarks not only trivialize women’s individuality but also reinforce the patriarchal notion that women’s primary role is biological rather than social, economic, or political.

Violence and Silence in the Home

• The statistics are harrowing: from 2017 to 2022, an average of 7,000 women per year were killed in dowry-related incidents, totalling 35,000 deaths.
• Beyond this, the National Family Health Survey-5 reports that nearly one-third of women experience intimate partner violence, yet only 14% report these crimes to the police.
• A third of all crimes against women fall under domestic violence.
• Despite these realities, the ruling establishment has avoided confronting patriarchal violence, treating it as a private matter rather than a structural injustice.

The Gendered Burden of Work

• The Time Use Survey (TUS) 2024 sheds light on another dimension of the domestic sphere: the invisibilised labour of women.
• Women between ages 15 and 59 show stark inequalities in participation across productive and unpaid activities.
• While only 25% of women are engaged in employment-related activities for an average of five hours daily, a staggering 93% undertake unpaid domestic work, averaging seven hours daily.
• In addition, 41% provide unpaid caregiving services, spending 2.5 hours daily.
• In contrast, men’s engagement in domestic work and caregiving is negligible: on average, men contribute 26 minutes to household tasks and less than 16 minutes to caregiving per day.
• This disparity reveals the entrenched gendered division of labour, where women shoulder the dual burden of productive and reproductive work.

State Narratives and the Glorification of Inequality

• The government’s framing of the TUS data further illustrates the institutionalization of gender bias.
• In February 2025, the Press Information Bureau hailed the findings as evidence of the Indian social fabric, celebrating women’s disproportionate role in caregiving as cultural virtue rather than systemic inequality.
• The meagre contribution of men to domestic labour was presented as a positive feature of family life.
• This deliberate glorification of inequality transforms structural oppression into cultural pride, shielding patriarchal norms from critique.

Capitalism and the Invisible Subsidy

• The invisibility of women’s unpaid work is not merely cultural, it is economic. A 2023 State Bank of India study estimated that monetizing unpaid domestic work would add over 7% to India’s GDP, amounting to ₹22.5 lakh crore annually.
• Yet, because women’s work is excluded from wage structures, it serves as an invisible subsidy for both the state and capital.
• Minimum wages are calculated on the basis of male subsistence, presuming that women’s unpaid labour will sustain families.
• In this way, patriarchy and capitalism converge: patriarchal norms naturalize women’s unpaid contributions, while capitalist structures profit from their undervaluation.

The Way Forward: Towards an Alternative Vision

• Confronting this systemic injustice requires interventions that span cultural, social, and policy domains.
• First, violence within homes must be treated as a structural issue, with proactive legal and social mechanisms to protect women.
• Second, women’s equal right to work must be affirmed, with guarantees of equal pay.
• Third, universal childcare and eldercare facilities provided by the state can redistribute caregiving responsibilities.
• Fourth, robust public investment in healthcare and education can reduce the domestic burden on women.
• Fifth, cultural narratives must be transformed to normalize the equal sharing of domestic responsibilities, challenging the glorification of inequality.
• Finally, frontline scheme workers in care services must be recognized as government employees entitled to fair wages and benefits.

Conclusion

• The domestic sphere is neither private nor apolitical, it is a contested site where power, ideology, and economics intersect.
• The glorification of women’s unpaid labour as cultural virtue, the silence on domestic violence, and the undervaluation of care work all reveal a systemic effort to subordinate women while profiting from their contributions.
• True nari shakti lies not in symbolic slogans but in confronting the material, cultural, and political realities that define women’s lives.