There is something deeply revealing about the question: "If we pull women out of families to add to GDP, who will do the caring?"
It sounds humane. It sounds concerned about families. It even sounds progressive because it challenges the tyranny of the GDP. But underneath the benevolent language sits an extraordinarily old assumption: women are the ones who care, and society must somehow ensure that they continue to do so.
This is the oldest trick in the gender conversation: take an arrangement created by social custom, call it natural, then warn that society will collapse if women stop performing it.
Women do an enormous amount of unpaid care work. It is invisible in conventional economic accounting and often economically penalises the people who perform it, and even dehumanises them by making them invisible. But recognising women's unpaid labour cannot mean romanticising the arrangement that assigns it disproportionately to women. The moment we say women "hold families together", we should ask why men are not seen doing so. After all, it's a much male-dominated society that we live in.
ALSO READ: Opinion | When NextGen Doesn't Need To Work, Then What?
Apparently, when a man goes to work, he is contributing to the economy. When a woman goes to work, somebody suddenly has to worry about who will raise the children, and care for ageing parents and to have the house look like a five star resort.
This is the peculiar moral arithmetic of a society that has spent decades congratulating itself for becoming modern while retaining remarkably traditional ideas about who should absorb the costs of family life.
A woman does not cease to care because she earns a salary.
A mother does not become less of a mother because she has an office.
A daughter does not abandon her parents because she has a profession.
And a wife does not become selfish because she wants an income, a career, ambition or simply a life that contains something besides serving everyone else.
So when an influential man asks who will care if women enter the workforce, the answer is sometimes brutally simple that we all know the answer to: another woman will.
That is the uncomfortable part of the conversation that polite discussions about a "caring economy" often avoid. In many affluent households, professional women have been able to pursue careers because another woman, usually poorer and less privileged, cooks, cleans, minds children or cares for the elderly. The care has not disappeared. It has simply moved from one woman to another.
So the question is not merely who will care. Whose woman will care?
This is why the conversation about female labour force participation deserves more honesty. India's female labour-force participation remains strikingly low. In 2025, it was 32.4% in India, against 55.9% in Japan, 56.3% in the US and 59.1% in China. These are ILO-modelled estimates reported by the World Bank for women aged 15 and above.
That gap should trouble us far more than the question of who will care when Indian women work. We have not discovered some superior model of family life because fewer women participate in the labour force. It has largely made women carry the private costs of care while asking them to compete in the public economy. The problem is not that too many Indian women are leaving the home. It is that too few have been given a fair chance to leave it without being made to feel guilty.
And there is something particularly sad about this assumption when it comes from educated and influential elites. These are people perfectly capable of imagining autonomous cars, artificial intelligence, global supply chains and the future of work. Yet when the conversation reaches childcare or ageing parents, their imagination can suddenly become remarkably conventional. They can imagine technology transforming almost every institution except the division of responsibility inside the home.
They can ask whether a machine will replace a worker. They seem less inclined to ask whether a husband can replace a wife at the school pickup.
A woman who spends years outside paid employment providing unpaid care may acquire love, purpose and belonging. She may also acquire economic dependence, weaker bargaining power, a thinner CV, lower retirement security and fewer choices. We should be careful before converting that dependence into a sentimental story about dignity.
This is where the argument about the GDP also needs care. The GDP is an inadequate measure of human flourishing. Of course it is. Relationships, loneliness, dignity, family and community matter. But that critique becomes intellectually dangerous when it quietly turns women's economic participation into the problem.
The real failure is that we have designed workplaces, homes and public policy around the assumption that somebody, usually a woman, will quietly absorb the friction.
If care matters, then build the institutions that support it. Affordable childcare. Good eldercare. Flexible workplaces. Parental leave for both parents. Social security for caregivers. Workplaces that understand that employees have families. Families in which men perform care without expecting applause.
And perhaps most importantly, stop treating men's participation in care as an act of extraordinary virtue.
The question should never have been, "Who will care when women go to work?"
It should have been: "Why did we ever decide that caring was women's work?"
That question is harder. It is also the one an increasingly modern India should finally have the courage to answer.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of NDTV Profit or its affiliates. Readers are advised to conduct their own research or consult a qualified professional before making any investment or business decisions. NDTV Profit does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented in this article.
ALSO READ: Opinion | The #NextGen Who Has Never Failed
Essential Business Intelligence, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice, Daily Fuel, Gold and Silver Prices and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.