Women build, nurture, care. It’s never ‘just’ a hobby

A recent Supreme Court ruling in India has described homemakers as "nation builders" and assigned a nominal value of Rs 30,000 per month to unpaid domestic labor. This has sparked a national conversation about the economic and social value of women's work, especially for those who have spent decades managing households, raising children, and caring for aging parents and in-laws.

Despite the recognition of this work, women are often still met with the phrase "just a housewife," implying that their contributions are not real work and do not count. The writer, a life coach, shares her own experience of stepping away from her academic career to focus on family responsibilities, only to face the same undervaluation when she attempted to return to paid work later in life.

She argues that caregiving years build valuable skills such as judgment, patience, crisis management, and emotional intelligence, and that women who return to paid work after this are not starting from nothing, but rather bringing years of practice and capabilities that no internship or entry-level role could have taught. The writer urges for a social reckoning beyond the legal recognition, changing how résumés are read, interview panels are trained, and society's perception of starting again at any age for any reason.