My Mother is a Superhero

All around the world mothers are waking up to iron their kids’ school uniforms or cook their families breakfast while others are mopping up the last bit of floor and tucking their children into bed. Morning to night, being a mother is a full time job. Here in Guatemala, I have yet to wake up earlier than my host mom. Even on the days when I wake up before 6am, I always come down to the kitchen to find my madre cooking breakfast or washing clothes. Her typical day consists of cooking three meals for four children (including me), washing all of our clothes, cleaning the entire house, picking her children up from school, helping them with their homework, and bathing her youngest, all while running a private business out of her home – a quaint and lovely gift shop. These familial duties are expected to be done solely by women in Guatemala, and they’re expected to start at an early age. Out in el campo I’ve seen young girls barely as tall as my hip taking care of their younger siblings or grandparents, cooking meals, and sweeping floors.

Obviously these chores are necessary, but in every single country in the world it is girls and women exclusively that are expected to tackle these tasks. Melinda Gates refers to this type of labor as ‘unpaid work.’ In the Gates Foundation 2016 Annual Letter, Mrs. Gates defines unpaid work as falling into three main categories: cooking, cleaning, and caring for children and the elderly. This is work in its strictest sense and every family, community, and society relies on it to function. According to the Gates Foundation, women around the world spend an average of 4.5 hours a day doing unpaid work while men spend less than 2. In the developing world, the chasm is even wider, with women devoting 6 hours of their day to unpaid labor and men less than 1. This is because the daily household tasks in developing countries like India or Tanzania are much harder for women without access to electricity, running water, or modern amenities like washing machines, dish washers, and daycare. Also, gender norms tend to be more rigid and oppressive for women in the developing world.

The incredible amount of time girls and women spend on their daily chores completely distorts their lives. In rural Guatemala the average woman has 6-7 children in her lifetime. Imagine your daily schedule of school or work, and then imagine having to cook, clean, and care for 6 other individuals on top of that. Further, imagine having to do it all by hand with water you had to walk nearly a mile to fetch. There’s simply no time for it all, so girls and women are forced to give up their dreams of going to school or work so that they can fulfill the expectation that they alone are responsible for all unpaid labor. Global economists refer to this phenomenon as ‘opportunity cost,’ or the other things women could be doing if they weren’t expected to exclusively shoulder the burden of these tasks. We talk a lot about encouraging girls to go to school and women to go to work, but do we as a society do anything to help lower women’s cost of opportunity? Picture a world in which men spent 3 hours a day taking care of the household rather than 2. Now think of the incredible things women around the world could accomplish with those extra billions of hours. Young girls could use this hour to do school work and learn more than was previously possible. Women could spend this time doing paid work or starting businesses, unimaginably empowering 50% of every country’s workforce and unlocking exciting potential for social and economic growth. And that’s just one hour.

Growing up I never fully appreciated how busy my mother is. It took me 23 years to even question how, and more importantly why, she does it all. Like my host mother here in Guatemala, my mom is always the first one up. For the entirety of my life, she has been my answer to everything. Who’s taking me to the dentist? Who’s making dinner? Who’s getting the grass stains out of my soccer shorts? The answer has always been her. When I think of all the hours she’s spent caring for me and our family, I’m incredibly humbled. She did all of this for me and my three siblings, all while excelling as a professional with a prestigious and accomplished career. I can hardly imagine where she found the time. My mother is a superhero and her superpower is finding a way to use just 24 measly hours a day to fit in raising a healthy family, maintaining a beautiful home, and breaking glass ceilings in her workplace. There are an innumerable amount of women around the world who are superheroes just like my mom: women who find the time to travel hours on end to access health care for their children, women who work twice as hard and twice as long as men for the same reward, and women who put everyone else’s needs before their own. Their work and their love is the foundation every civilization is built on, every functional economy relies on, and nearly every person owes their own personal success to. Imagine what they can do, imagine the world we can create together, if we just give them more time.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women in my life that have devoted their precious time to helping mold me into the woman I am today. Words cannot express my gratitude.