What my mother gave the economy for free

Before I knew about the financial markets, before I knew analytics, I knew my mother’s hands. Long before the sun painted the sky, they moved through the first dim glow with a quiet assurance. These hands signed permission papers, cleaned pots, painstakingly folded clothes, wiped counters, and stabilised small, shaky shoulders. Without being recognised, they carried the hulking weight of a home, transforming regular hours into a solid basis for our lives to prosper. My mother’s hands had already shaped the day and our futures by the time the rest of the family rose.

That labour would never be documented. No salary, no job description, and no acknowledgment in the global database. Yet all that ensued, difficult school mornings, my father’s morning porridge and packed lunch, my sister’s and my dreams, softly rested on the sturdy base of her hands already assembled.

In her truest form my mother is a lionheart; she works relentlessly, habitually, and meticulously as a guardian of time, resources, and possibility. Because her job is challenging to classify, it is perpetual, cerebral, emotionally charged, and physically demanding; it is not accounted for. It is there in anticipating needs, sustaining order, and diligently coordinating both schedules and hearts. It is also all too frequently dismissed since it simultaneously exists everywhere and seemingly nowhere.

An immense amount of unpaid childcare and domestic labour is performed by women globally. They arrange other people’s lives for more than twice as many hours per day as men do. They keep households, communities, and societies at large operational while continuing to be invisible in economic metrics. According to analysts, unpaid household labour could make up between 10 and 39 per cent of GDP if it were valued monetarily. Yet the world remains reliant on its exploitation at no cost.

Although many women make a deliberate choice to live this life, choices are not made in a vacuum. The unseen architecture of expectation whispered that women have a natural duty to be accountable for others, that longing could wait, and that sacrifice and undying selflessness was the most potent indicator of love. Women from a plethora of cultures make the choice under the weight of tradition, inherited expectations, and intangible forces. Being conscious of this does not compromise a woman’s agency; instead, it honours the fortitude needed to successfully navigate these currents while giving every fibre of her being to others.

We depend on these pretty words to ease this circumstance - to soften the blow. We refer to it as devotion. Instinctive. Love. Yes, it is love, but love is an inadequate term to fully comprehend the exertion, endurance, and discipline women put into each day of their waking life for their counterparts to function.

Women do not put down their professional goals because they are incapable of bringing them into fruition. They put them down because someone needed to stay to carry on the unbeknown labour which nourishes families and economies. They put them down and leave claw marks as they let go. My drive, my passion, my very existence was made attainable by my mother’s sacrifice. The silent, incessant labour of her hands and heart fostered my education, my self-reliance, and my opportunity to live a life in several corners of the globe.

This is how inequality is perpetuated - not necessarily by force, but through expectation and the silent yet mighty gravity of tradition. Women who endure the primary responsibility for unpaid domestic labour are more likely to let their ambitions fade at the edges of life, earn less over their lifetimes, and experience financial vulnerability in later years. Globally, when paid and unpaid labour are totalled together, women work longer hours than men, yet these hours stay undervalued, exploited, and invisible.

Society is only just beginning to uncover the immense value of domestic labour. Sustainable Development Goal 5.4 is a call to action in terms of recognising and redistributing unpaid care work. Acknowledgement without redistribution and reparation is futile. Efficient and lasting change needs social impact, community responsibility, and the sociopolitical understanding that care is work — vital, exhausting, and irreplaceable work.

Only as I gained political awareness did I truly realise the profundity of her labour. My eyes are opened to the years she deferred so I could grow and flourish into my own life. I see that she gave me the gift of possibility, the gift of choice. I see the silent currency of a mother’s love infused in her children.

As my sister and I have grown, my mother has returned to a part of herself that she had set down; she is a writer. Before motherhood, her universe was journalism, proficient in the pursuit of paying attention and making sense of the world. This return is not proof of ease, but of endurance. The years did not decompose her skill; they made it invisible. Motherhood did not end her career, but ruptured it, forced it to wait in a world that rarely holds adequate room for women to return after leaving.

What my mother gave the economy for free was sacred; time, zeal, ambition, and the yearning for years that cannot be retrieved. It was the invisible scaffolding of our lives. Until we collectively name that labour without our voices shaking, until we comprehend its depth, we continue to mistake exploitation for devotion — and obligation for love.

Not a day goes by where I do not owe the hands that built my life. And each step I take through this world, I carry a piece of her labour, her dedication, her love, in mine.

Meher Vakharia was born and raised in Dubai, and is now studying in Canada.