Every year, Mothers Day comes and goes on May 7th just as Womens Day on Mar 8th. But the unwritten and unaccounted subsidy that capable, productive, educated, women provide to public life is usually forgotten.

Most often, our elders get care at home from homemakers. Second, domestic help and cooks and their unpredictable schedules are ‘managed’ at the cost of our homemakers’ time. Third, everything from receiving LPG cylinders, couriers, mail, to daycare and pre-school centre timings are run today around the premise of homemakers’ availability.

These assumptions about life itself will breakdown locally if more women pursued full-time work by their own choice, instead of being taken for granted as homemakers. On Mother’s Day (May 7th) and Women’s Day (Mar 8th), it is best to remember this.

It is an established trend in democratisation itself that nations do better when women have and excerise the choice of working full-time. As the balance shifts, it will simply result in more opportunities for entrepreneurs to create and run childcare, daycare, elder-care services. This will result in wider availability of such services and standardisation too.

Those times will hopefully come around in this generation or the next, and in the meantime let’s remember, this Mother’s day, the massive credit our women, mothers and homemakers are due. ⊕