A photograph of Thiruvananthapuram Mayor Arya Rajendran in her office, holding her one-month-old infant as she works, has become a conversation point in Kerala. The image, pushed as a symbol of womanly strength, is complicated, as it invokes many questions about gender roles and work-life balance. Can women do it all? And most importantly, what message does such generalisation of one woman’s experience mean for other women?
Many female politicians have famously been photographed at work with their infants, with some like Australian MP Larissa Waters, New Zealand MP Willow Jean Prime, and many others, spotted breastfeeding their babies in parliament. Some female politicians like Kristie Marshall, a former MP from Australia’s Victoria, were asked to leave the parliament session because she was found breastfeeding, back in 2003. The United States, in 2018, even passed a law that allows new parents to bring babies onto the Senate floor. All of this has stirred discourse and while many insist that women must be able to take their infants to work, many others point out that this only underlines how women become primary caregivers in parenting, absolving their male partners of the labour.
Arya Rajendran, the youngest Mayor in India, married Balussery MLA Sachin Dev, a representative of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in September 2022. Their child was born in August 2023, and Arya resumed work in the first week of September. As soon as the photograph of Arya holding her baby in one hand and signing official files with the other went viral, many prominent voices were quick to endorse it as reflective of a woman’s ability to multitask. CPI(M) MP AA Rahim took to social media platform X, and shared the photograph with a note: ‘Thiruvananthapuram Mayor, Comrade Arya Rajendran at her office, busy with her official work’. Many social media users agreed with this and said that the photograph shows the dedication of a new mother, who leaves no stone unturned in pursuing both work and the well-being of her baby.
In many situations, women bringing their children to work is perceived as a power move. This indicates how new mothers are not willing to hide their jugglery of work and personal life, also in many ways, humanising the personhood of a woman at work. Mothers, especially when their children are too little, often find it hard to separate from them, or to simply leave them in someone else’s care. Quite many emotions run free in this domain and those who are unwilling to compartmentalise such emotions to seem more put together for the public eye, simply own them. This of course, for those women who embrace it, is definitely a power move that strengthens their sense of self.
Contrary to this, many others on social media questioned the lack of supporting aids like a creche at the workplace to help new mothers, which the law mandates, asking why the Mayor had to hold the child herself. While it must be pointed out that a small infant cannot be left at a creche, some social media users also asked if we ever see a child’s father bring the infant to work, citing the absence of a gender-equal mindset among the youth of the country. “The message this photograph gives is counter-productive for women. This will fortify the generalisation that if a Mayor can work a month post-partum with her infant in hand, every woman can do it,” noted a female Facebook user. She also went on to say that someone as privileged as the Mayor can afford childcare support and that she need not do all the work herself, suggesting that the photograph is an image-building gimmick to enhance public support for Arya.
Many also pointed out that in 2018, the Kerala government issued an order disallowing government employees from bringing their children to work, the reason being the loss of focused work hours. The order also said that it does more harm than good for children since they neither get quality time with their parents nor the freedom to move around and play. While a Mayor is a people’s representative and not exactly a government employee, it is important to note that in either case, the government order in itself does not specify the age of the children in this context, nor does it take into account the complexities of mothering an infant.
While these arguments may apply differently to different mothers, the complexities that the photograph invokes are much more than the right-wrong binary. While one woman may experience little post-partum distress, enabling her to join work and manage her infant if need be, another may not even be able to prop herself out of her room. The problem is not with celebrating the Thiruvananthapuram Mayor’s day at work with her infant, but with how it translates into the glorification of a new mother’s jugglery of work and parenting. What really plays out in scenarios like these is perhaps how privileged the mother is, and whether or not her physical and mental health allow her to resume work sooner than later.
We live in a world where Mother’s Day messages and Women’s Day wishes all showcase an often overworked woman with six hands, each dealing with a separate set of chores. This excessive labour that women are expected to exert is then glorified in the name of multi-tasking, making it almost shameful for those who are not able to meet this impossible standard. In such an ecosystem, when a woman with an important public welfare portfolio such as that of the Mayor is celebrated for smoothly handling work with her baby in hand, the messaging becomes counterproductive. It standardises how a new mother ought to behave, validating the nonsensical ‘If she can do it why can’t you’ model of comparative shaming.
As for the question regarding the absence of the father, though we must refrain from making judgments based on one photograph from one day in a woman’s life, the question of equal division of parenting labour is not one that can be ignored. It is quite troubling to see how only women carry their children to work, while their male partners post pictures of ‘quality time’ spent at home with their child, or how they ‘miss’ their children while ‘away and busy’ at work.
There is no denying that an infant may physically need the mother more than the father. Motherhood is an experience that is moulded by social constructs, but it is also a complex gamut of emotions within which many women derive genuine joy. Nonetheless, when motherhood is also a gender role in a society with gender bias, it is not just a personal experience that can be left to subjectivity in public discourse. When women are glorified for bringing their ‘home to work’ like Kerala’s Higher Education Minister R Bindu recently put it, the consensus is that women must compensate more in order to have both a career and a family. This is a distressing image, and one that goes much beyond simply sharing the joyous triumphs of motherhood through a photograph.