It is difficult to speak today about care without confronting the brutal contradictions of our time. We live in an era saturated with news of violence, exclusion, and cruelty—often justified in the name of culture, religion, or economic growth, and increasingly enabled by technology. Against this backdrop, the idea of building a more caring world can seem almost naïve. Yet if there is one place where care must be reclaimed and reimagined, it is the family. The family is where gender norms are first learned and reproduced, where discrimination is often normalized, and where inequality quietly takes root before spilling into society at large.
Across India, China, and much of Asia, the structure of the family reveals enduring patterns of gendered injustice. Discrimination begins even before birth and continues throughout the life cycle. Women carry a disproportionate burden of unpaid care work—within households, in communities, and increasingly in informal economies—while being expected to place family responsibilities ahead of paid work. This care, though essential, comes at a high cost. It limits women’s financial independence, restricts their decision-making power, and reinforces their status as secondary citizens within their own homes.
Care, Property, and Power
Care cannot be separated from questions of property and power. Despite women’s central role in agriculture and household production; land, housing, and productive assets remain overwhelmingly owned by men. What is often described as the “feminization of agriculture” is more accurately the feminization of agricultural labour without ownership or control. Women work the land, but do not own it. They sustain families, yet lack security when marriages fail or violence occurs.
This inequality within families mirrors inequalities in public life. Despite decades of advocacy, women remain underrepresented in political institutions, corporate leadership, and decision-making bodies. Legal reforms, while necessary, have proved insufficient on their own. Even landmark changes—such as amendments granting daughters inheritance rights—have benefited only a small minority of women in practice. Social norms, family pressures, and fear of losing relationships or shelter continue to deter women from claiming what the law formally grants them.
Marriage lies at the center of this system. Far from being a purely personal institution, it remains deeply entangled with caste, class, and property relations. Girls are socialized to seek husbands who are older, wealthier, and socially superior, reinforcing dependence rather than partnership. When women transgress these expectations—by choosing their own partners, asserting autonomy, or questioning authority—they face sanctions ranging from social ostracism to violence. Disturbingly, many women themselves justify such violence, not because they accept injustice, but because they see no viable alternatives. Without property, income, or institutional support, leaving an abusive marriage often means losing one’s home, children, and social standing.
Rethinking Norms, Reforming Institutions
Building a caring world does not mean abandoning the family or rejecting marriage. It means reforming these institutions so that care is shared, valued, and supported rather than extracted from women as an obligation. Paid work is central to this transformation. Access to decent, paid employment provides women with agency, dignity, and bargaining power both within and beyond the household. Yet women’s labour force participation remains strikingly low, reflecting not a lack of capability, but the weight of unpaid care responsibilities and restrictive norms.
There is also a profound gap between care and policy. While governments increasingly acknowledge care in rhetoric, policies often fail to address its structural dimensions. Closing this gap requires more than state action alone. History shows that meaningful change emerges from the interaction of research, social movements, and sustained engagement with policymakers. Women’s movements have long challenged inflation, wage inequality, and domestic violence, but new forms of knowledge production are needed—ones that take lived realities seriously and critically examine social norms that masquerade as “natural.”
This critical reflection must begin at home. Norms persist because they go unquestioned, reproduced through everyday practices and expectations. Challenging them requires men to unlearn entitlement and women to be supported in claiming autonomy, not blamed for complicity. Culture, too, must be approached critically. Celebrating symbols of feminine power while denying women education, resources, and rights is a hollow gesture. Heritage has value only when it is translated into lived equality.
A caring world will not be built through nostalgia or denial. It will emerge through honest reckoning—with family structures, with power, and with the social norms that shape our most intimate lives. The family, far from being a private refuge, is the core site where care must be redefined if justice is to take root.
