"PM Modi, please make men share housework!" "莫迪总理，请让男人分担家务!"
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Quibbles over who does the housework during the recent coronavirus lockdown have brought the gender politics of India's homes into the open.
Housework in India usually involves a lot of heavy lifting. Unlike in the West, few Indian homes are equipped with dishwashers, vacuum cleaners or washing machines.
印度的家务通常都是繁重的工作。与西方发达国家不同，很少有印度家庭配备洗碗机、吸尘器或洗衣机。
So, dishes have to be individually cleaned, clothes have to be washed in buckets and hung out to dry, and homes have to be swept with brooms and mopped with rags. Then there are children to be looked after and the elderly and infirm to be cared for.
所以，碗碟必须单独清洗，衣服必须手洗然后挂在外面晾干，房子必须用扫帚打扫，用抹布拖地。还要照顾孩子、老人和病人。
In millions of middle class homes, the housework is delegated to the hired domestic help - part-time cooks, cleaners and nannies. But what happens when the help can't come to work because there is a nationwide lockdown?
在数以百万计的中产阶级家庭中，家务被委托给雇佣的家政人员，包括兼职厨师、清洁工和保姆。但是如果因为全国范围的封锁，家政人员无法前来工作，会发生什么呢？
The answer is friction and fighting - and in one unique case, a petition urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene.
答案是摩擦和争斗。苏巴纳·高希（Subarna Ghosh）在change.org（一个利用在线请愿促进社会改变的网站）网站上发布了一份请愿书呼吁总理莫迪对此进行干预，她希望总理在下次演讲中解决这个问题，并鼓励所有印度男人平等分担家务。
"Does the handle of a jhadu (broom) come printed with the words: 'to be operated by women only'?" asks the petition, published on change.org. "What about the manual of the washing machine or gas stove? Then why is it that most men are not doing their share of housework!"
请愿书中写道:“扫把的把手是否印着‘仅由女性操作’的字样？洗衣机或煤气炉的使用手册呢？那为什么大多数男人不做他们份内的家务呢？”
The petition's author, Subarna Ghosh, who was fed up of cooking and cleaning and doing laundry while trying to work from home, wants the prime minister "to address the issue in his next speech" and to "encourage all Indian men to do an equal share of housework".
请愿书的发起者高希厌倦了在家工作时还要做饭、打扫、洗衣服。
"It's a fundamental question, why don't more people talk about it?" she wrote.
她写道，“这是一个基本问题，为什么没有更多的人谈论它？”
Ms Ghosh's petition has gathered nearly 70,000 signatures - a reflection of the scale of gender inequality in homes across India. According to an International Labour Organization report, in 2018 women in urban India spent 312 minutes a day on unpaid care work. Men did 29 minutes. In villages, it was 291 minutes for women as against 32 minutes for men.
高希的请愿书已经征集到了近7万个签名，这反映了印度家庭中性别不平等的程度。
In Ms Ghosh's Mumbai home it was no different. The petition, came out of "life experiences of my own, and also of lots of women around me". The burden of housework had always been hers, she said. "I do cooking, cleaning, making beds, laundry, folding clothes and everything else."
份请愿书来自“我自己的生活经历，也来自我周围很多女性的生活经历”。她说，家务的重担一直都是她的。“我做饭、打扫卫生、铺床、洗衣服、叠衣服等等。
Her husband, a banker, was "not the type to help with housework", she said. Her teenage son and daughter sometimes chip in.
她的银行家丈夫“不是那种愿意帮忙做家务的人”，她十几岁的儿子和女儿有时会来帮忙做家务。
Ms Ghosh, who runs a charity which works on reproductive justice, said the expectation that she would be the one to compromise on work was much higher during the lockdown.
高希女士经营着一家致力于生殖公正的慈善机构。但在封锁期间，家务繁重影响了她的工作。
"My work suffered, at least in April, the first month of the lockdown. I was exhausted all the time, I was tired every day. Our family dynamics changed. I definitely complained a lot. And when I complained people said, 'Then don't do it'."
她说：“我的工作受到了影响，至少在4月份，也就是封锁的第一个月。我一直都很累，我每天都很累。我们的家庭状况也发生了变化，我确实抱怨过很多。当我抱怨时，人们说，‘那就别做了’。”
Ms Ghosh took their advice - for three days in early May, she didn't do any dishes or fold any clothes.
高希采纳了他们的建议。在5月初的三天里，她没有洗碗，也没有洗衣服。
"The sink was overflowing with unwashed dishes and the pile of laundry grew bigger and bigger," she said.
水槽里堆满了没洗的盘子，脏衣服也堆得越来越多。
Her husband and children realised how upset she was and they cleaned up the mess.
她的丈夫和孩子们意识到她有多沮丧，于是他们帮她收拾了残局。
"My husband has started helping me with chores. He understood I was very affected by it, that it was bothering me a lot," she said. "But our men are also victims of this culture and society. They have not been trained to do housework. They require a little bit of hand-holding."
她说：“我丈夫已经开始帮我做家务了。他知道我受到了很大的影响，这让我很困扰。但男性也是这种社会文化的受害者，他们没有受过做家务的训练。”
That's because in India, as in many other patriarchal societies, girls are groomed from a young age to be perfect homemakers. It is taken for granted that the housework is their responsibility and if they went out and got themselves a job, they would just have to do "double duty" - manage both home and work.
这是因为在印度，女孩从小就被培养成完美的家庭主妇。人们理所当然地认为家务是她们的责任，如果她们还要出去工作，她们就得同时做家务和工作。
"As a child, it was always me who had to do house chores, work in the kitchen and help out my mom," wrote one woman, Pallavi Sareen, when I asked friends and colleagues on Facebook for their stories about division of labour. "My brother wouldn't even serve himself lunch," she said.
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Most who replied saying their homes were gender neutral had either lived abroad or married men who had spent time in the West. The stories closer to home were different.
"Housework is still considered a woman's job," wrote Upasana Bhat. "Even if men offer to help, how many will do so if the couple live with the in-laws? That would be a truly progressive day. I know of women whose husbands help out, but can't lift a finger in the kitchen when his parents visit."
According to an Oxfam report, Indian women and girls put in more than three billion hours of unpaid care work daily. If it were assigned a monetary value it would add trillions of rupees to India's gross domestic product.
But in reality, the cost of housework is rarely calculated. It is seen as something a woman does out of love.
Growing up, Ms Ghosh thought differently. She saw her mother and aunts do all the housework and thought, "No way I'm going to be like that".
在成长过程中，高希有了不同的想法。她看到妈妈和阿姨们做了所有的家务，心想，“我可不会变成那样的。”
When she married, the fault lines over housework were partly hidden because of the presence of domestic help, leading to a false sense of equality at home. "Domestic help also helps maintain peace in our homes," she said. "The chores are taken care of and it seems all is well."
当她结婚的时候，因为家政服务的存在，导致了一种家庭平等的错觉。她说:“家政服务也有助于维持我们家里的和平。家务事都有人处理了，看起来一切都很好。”
But the lockdown brought the family face-to-face with the daily drudgery of housework and with the inequality that had been "shoved under the carpet".
但封锁让家庭必须面对日常繁重的家务劳动，不平等也随之浮现出来。
"The lockdown made these chasms more glaring," Ms Ghosh said. "It also gave me an opportunity to look it in the eye and lay it bare."
高希表示：“这也给了我一个机会去正视它，把它暴露出来。”
So she set about petitioning the prime minister.
于是她开始向总理请愿。
The women she spoke to in her neighbourhood said they were equally frustrated with housework, but most found the idea that their husbands help around the house ludicrous.
与她交谈过的邻居们说，她们同样对做家务感到沮丧，但大多数人觉得让丈夫帮忙做家务的想法很可笑。
"Many asked me, 'How can he cook or clean?' Many, in fact, praised their husbands for being easy-going. They'd say, 'He's very nice, whatever I cook he eats without complaining'."
她说：“有许多人问我，‘他怎么能做饭，怎么能打扫？’事实上，很多人都称赞自己的丈夫很随和。她们会说，‘他很好，我做什么他吃什么，都不会抱怨’。”
The issue was so close to home that it was difficult to confront, Ms Ghosh said.
高希表示，这个问题非常现实，很难面对。
"When it's your own father, brother or husband, how do you question them? But the personal is political too - so I need to talk about it, but I also have to play the good wife."
When Ms Ghosh told her husband that she was starting a petition he was "very supportive", she said.
高希说，当她告诉丈夫她正在请愿时，丈夫“非常支持”。
"His friends made fun of him. They asked him, 'Why didn't you just do some housework? Look, now your wife has gone and petitioned Modi!'
但他的朋友取笑他。他们问他:“你为什么不做家务呢？你看，现在你的妻子都去向莫迪请愿了！”
"He took it on the chin," she said, laughing. "He told them, 'Because more men listen to Mr Modi than their own wives'."
她笑着说：“他告诉他们，‘因为听莫迪讲话的男人比听自己妻子讲话的人多’。
Ms Ghosh's petition was also criticised by a lot of people on social media. Many chided her for bothering the prime minister with "a frivolous matter".
高希的请愿书也在社交媒体上遭到了很多人的批评。许多人指责她用“无聊的事情”来打扰总理。
"Some people wrote to me saying Indian women need to do their housework. Yes we do, but where are the men?"
I asked her if she thought Mr Modi would talk about housework.
当被问及是否认为莫迪会谈论家务。
"I'm hopeful," she said. "Mr Modi has a huge support base among women, so he should talk about an issue that's important to women. When the rainy season started, he talked about cough and cold, so why can't he talk about gender equality?"
她表示，我满怀希望。莫迪在女性中拥有巨大的支持基础，所以他应该谈论一个对女性来说很重要的问题。雨季开始的时候，他谈到了咳嗽和感冒，那么为什么就不能谈论性别平等呢？
Source: BBC
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