The thing you know when you are about to get married is that your life will change now.

You can sit behind a man, ride a bike, or cruise around town more freely than an unmarried girl. You can go out for ice cream – at night! – With an unsuspecting new husband who is abusive, surveillance, or betrays family honor. But I also know that the drudgery of work and household chores awaits on the other side. Because that’s the unspoken title of “married woman”.

Bombay High Court appears to perpetuate this kind of stigma against women who refuse to submit to demands for domestic or caring work or choose to do their own work. Judges Vibha V Kankanwadi and Rajesh S Patil dismissed a domestic violence complaint from a woman who claimed she was treated like a domestic servant by her husband and in-laws a month after their marriage. “If a married woman is only asked to do housework, she cannot be called a housekeeper,” .

Even before the law was enacted, domestic labor is inherent in the logic of marriage. Aside from the callous use of words like “maid,” the judgment initially appears to justify a fundamentally unequal division of labor. What’s the problem when a wife is expected to do housework? In fact, housework has nothing to do with the reproductive organs and can be done by both genders. But it is still gendered work, underappreciated, performed primarily by women worldwide. Second, when you agree to marry, you are fully agreeing to housework for the rest of your life. Not only do the couple’s families feel entitled to women’s work, but the courts seem to see it the same way.In this sense, marriage is not a melting pot of love, romance and dreams, It is an unequal arrangement that everyone except women has the right to get a job.

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