How Much More Are Women Expected to Carry?

 

Think about everything a woman's body can go through in one lifetime.

As a man, I will never know what it feels like to have a period, carry a pregnancy or give birth.

I can read about it, listen to women talk about it and learn what medical research tells us, but I cannot claim those experiences as my own.

What I can do is pay attention. And the more I learn about women's bodies, the more I realize how much of what they go through is treated as ordinary simply because it happens to women.

Take endometriosis, for example. It can cause severe pain and affect someone's life for years, yet women are still told that what they are experiencing is nothing more than a bad period. They are expected to carry on with work, school, relationships and everyday life while dealing with pain that many of us would struggle to understand.

And this isn't just something people say. The World Health Organization estimates that endometriosis affects around 10% of women of reproductive age worldwide  approximately 190 million people. It can involve severe menstrual pain, heavy bleeding, chronic pelvic pain and infertility. WHO also reports that the average time to diagnosis can be between four and twelve years, depending on the setting.

And endometriosis is only one part of the story that is so often overlooked.

A woman's body goes through years of menstruation, hormonal changes and pain.

Imagine knowing that another human being is growing inside you and that your body is going to change whether you are ready for it or not.

And childbirth is only one part of it. After nine months of carrying a baby, a woman still has to recover from giving birth while learning how to care for someone who suddenly depends on her for almost everything. Her body needs time to heal, but life does not give her that time. There is a baby to feed, to hold, to comfort and to keep alive.

It is a lot to ask of any human being.

And we should not forget what can happen after childbirth.

Postpartum depression is real, and sometimes the woman who gave birth to your child may be struggling while everyone around her is celebrating.

She may not even know how to explain what she is feeling. That is when we need to pay attention. Don't tell her to just be happy because she has a baby.

Don't leave her to figure it out alone.

If she is your wife, your partner, the mother of your child, stand beside her. Check on her. Listen to her. Help her.

 And if she needs professional help, support her in getting it. She should not have to become invisible simply because the baby has become everyone's priority.

This isn't simply about a woman being tired after having a baby. WHO estimates that around 13% of women who have just given birth experience a mental health disorder, primarily depression, and the figure is higher in some developing-country settings. These conditions are treatable, but they can go unrecognized.

Then there are the women who never get to take their baby home. They experience miscarriages.

Some struggle for years to become pregnant. Some live with conditions such as fibroids, PCOS or endometriosis and spend years trying to understand why their bodies hurt or why something that seems so easy for others is so difficult for them.

PCOS alone affects an estimated 10–13% of women of reproductive age worldwide, according to WHO, and up to 70% of women with PCOS may not know they have it. It can affect menstrual cycles, ovulation and fertility.

And then there is the question of choice.

Not every woman who gets pregnant is happy about it, let the truth be told.

Some have wanted a child for years. Some never want children. Some want them, but later. Some may become pregnant at a point in their life when having a child would change everything they have been trying to build.

Others may be dealing with a pregnancy that comes with medical risks, financial problems, a complicated relationship, or circumstances that nobody outside of them could understand.

I don't think we talk enough about how personal that decision is.

It is easy for someone standing outside of the situation to say, “I would never do that,” or “She should have done this.” But you are not the one waking up in that body every morning.

You are not the one carrying the pregnancy. You are not the one dealing with the physical changes, the appointments, the fear, the possibility of childbirth, or everything that could come after.

This is why I believe a woman's choice matters.

Because she is the person whose body and life are directly involved. We cannot ask women to carry the consequences of decisions that we made for them. If she wants that pregnancy, let it be her joy. If she doesn't, let it be her decision.

We can have opinions. We can have values. We can have conversations. But there is a difference between having an opinion and believing that our opinion gives us ownership over someone else's body.

Because we will never know what it feels like to carry a pregnancy. We will never know what it feels like to feel a child move inside us, to experience the physical changes, the exhaustion, the fear of childbirth or the uncertainty that can come with pregnancy.

We will never know what it is like to go through a miscarriage, to struggle with infertility or to live with a condition that makes our own body painful to live in.

Imagine carrying all of that and then being told what you should do with your body by someone who will never have to experience the consequences of that decision.

That, to me, is where the conversation about women's bodily autonomy becomes important.

A woman can bring another human being into the world, but that does not mean the world gets to decide what she should or should not do with her own body. She can choose motherhood, or she can choose a different life. She can want children, fear pregnancy, change her mind or simply know that motherhood is not what she wants. None of those choices make her less of a woman.

The least we can do is recognize that there are experiences we will never understand.

We can listen.

We can learn.

We can stop dismissing pain simply because it is associated with the female body.

And we can understand that respecting women does not mean deciding for them.

It simply means accepting that their body, their health and the choices that come with it belong to them.

And part of respecting women is learning when to stop asking questions that are not ours to ask.

We need to stop casually asking a woman, “So, when are you getting pregnant?” as if having a child is a deadline she has somehow forgotten.

Stop asking newly married couples when the baby is coming. Stop asking a woman why she only has one child, why she doesn't have children, or whether she is “trying.” We have no idea what may be happening behind that simple answer she gives us.

Maybe she has been trying for years and every month brings disappointment.

Maybe she has had a miscarriage she has never told anyone about. Maybe she has endometriosis, fibroids, PCOS or another condition affecting her fertility. Maybe she is terrified of pregnancy. Maybe she does not want children. Maybe she is pregnant and has no idea what she is going to do. Maybe she is simply not ready.

And honestly, we should stop being so damn intrusive about it.

Not every question needs to be asked just because we are curious.

Sometimes there is an entire story behind the answer that we have no right to demand. A woman should not have to explain her reproductive history just to satisfy someone's curiosity at a family gathering, at work or in a conversation with friends.

We can be happy for someone when they choose to become a parent without assuming everyone else is waiting for the same thing. We can congratulate a pregnancy without treating motherhood as the inevitable destination of every woman. And we can learn to leave some questions alone.

Because sometimes “When are you having a baby?” is not a harmless question.

You might have just reminded someone of the baby she lost.

You might have reminded someone that she has been trying and it hasn't happened.

You might have touched something she has spent years trying to make peace with.

Or maybe she simply doesn't want to have children.

And that should be enough.

It doesn't stop with questions about children. We also need to talk about how quickly women are labelled “hormonal” or “too sensitive” when they express emotions that make us uncomfortable.

Yes, hormones can affect mood. Periods, pregnancy, postpartum changes, perimenopause and menopause can all bring changes that affect how some women feel.

But “she's hormonal” has become an easy way to end a conversation.

She is angry? Hormonal.

She is crying? Too sensitive.

She is upset about something that happened? Overreacting.

I wonder how much of this has less to do with her emotions and more to do with our own ego.

Because it can be uncomfortable to accept that you hurt someone. It can be uncomfortable to hear a woman tell you that something you said or did affected her. It is much easier to call her dramatic than to sit with the possibility that maybe she has a reason to be upset.

We have created this strange idea that being sensitive is something to be ashamed of.

But what exactly is wrong with being sensitive?

Why does a woman have to become less emotional, less expressive and less affected by things before we decide that what she is saying deserves to be taken seriously?

A woman can be emotional and still be telling the truth. She can cry and still have a point. She can be angry and still be right. And she can be sensitive without being weak.

The problem isn't that she is too sensitive.

We are simply not sensitive enough to what she is going through.

And then there is the way women are looked at.

I have to include myself in this conversation because I am not outside of the problem simply because I am writing about it. As men, we have to be honest about the ways we have contributed to making women feel watched, judged and sexualized simply for existing in public.

A woman can wear a short dress, a skirt, a vest, jeans, makeup or nothing at all and somehow someone decides that her appearance is an invitation.

She can be walking to work, going home, buying groceries or just enjoying herself, and someone feels entitled to comment on her body, whistle at her, shout something sexual at her or follow her with their eyes.

It needs to stop.

Not every woman who dresses a certain way is looking for attention. Not every woman wants to be admired. Not every woman wants to be approached. Not every woman wants to be turned into a sexual symbol the moment she walks into a room.

Sometimes she just likes the clothes she wore. She feels good in her body. And she didn't think about us at all.

And that last part is something we need to understand.

Not everything a woman does is about men.

She doesn't exist to entertain us, attract us or make us feel good about ourselves. Her body is not public property just because we can see it.

I think about how exhausting it must be to constantly calculate your surroundings — what to wear, where to walk, who is behind you, whether that person is staring, whether a comment is harmless or whether it is about to become something worse.

A simple walk home should not require that much thought.

We have normalized catcalling so much that it is treated as a compliment.

But imagine being told that you should be flattered by something that makes you uncomfortable or afraid. Imagine having to pretend not to hear it because responding might make the situation worse.

And this is where I think we need to look at ourselves.

What kind of world are we creating for women when simply existing outside can come with the possibility of being watched, commented on, followed or sexualized?

Let me bring it close to home. Imagine if this was your child going through this.

Then there is beauty.

And I think this one deserves more honesty, because some of us have participated in it without even realizing it. We grow up seeing certain women get called beautiful more often than others.

Think about the lists we see online: “The most beautiful women in the world.” Look at the faces that repeatedly appear. Look at the features that are praised. Look at the kinds of bodies that are celebrated.

And then think about what a young girl sees.

If she rarely sees someone who looks like her being described as beautiful, what does that teach her?

And before someone says, “This is not about race,” it is also about representation.

Lupita Nyong'o is undeniably beautiful, but one Black woman being included in a list does not suddenly represent every Black woman. We need more diversity than simply placing one Black woman, one Asian woman or one woman from another underrepresented group into a list so that nobody can accuse us of leaving them out.

This applies to every group of women who are repeatedly left outside the narrow definition of what is considered conventionally attractive.

We hear comments about skin being “too dark,” hair being “too hard,” noses being “too big,” lips being “too much.” We hear which kind of girl is “pretty” and which one is “cute,” which body is desirable and which one should be hidden.

You might laugh when you're young, but you remember those things.

To the Black girl who has ever looked at another woman and wished she had her skin, her hair, her nose, her body 

I wish you had never been made to feel like you were missing something.

Because I know we like to say “Black is beautiful,” but sometimes those words feel empty when the same society saying them still treats some Black women as more desirable than others.

Dark skin gets mocked. Natural hair gets called unprofessional. Curves are sexualized until they become inconvenient. A woman's body is praised when it fits the trend and criticized when it doesn't.

And Black girls are watching all of this.

They are growing up and figuring out what parts of themselves they are supposed to love and what parts they are supposed to change. Some will spend money trying to lighten their skin. Some will damage their hair trying to make it behave like something it isn't. Some will spend years fighting their bodies because somebody taught them that being thinner, lighter or shaped differently would make them more worthy of attention.

I don't want a Black girl to grow up thinking beauty is something she has to negotiate for.

I am dark, and I would love my child to live in a world where she is seen for who she is and not how she looks.

I want her to be able to look at her dark skin and not wonder if it would be prettier a few shades lighter. I want her to wear her natural hair without feeling like she needs to explain it. I want her to see her own features before the world teaches her to compare them.

And as men, we need to look at the role we play in that too. We cannot complain about beauty standards while helping create them with the women we choose to praise, pursue, sexualize and publicly compare.

The way we look at women teaches girls something too.

A Black girl should not have to become somebody else's idea of beautiful before she can believe she is beautiful herself.

And you are beautiful. You are a queen. Never let this world convince you otherwise.

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Sources used 

• World Health Organization Endometriosis  prevalence, symptoms and diagnostic delays.
• World Health Organization  Polycystic ovary syndrome  PCOS prevalence, diagnosis and fertility effects.
• World Health Organization  Perinatal mental health  postpartum mental-health statistics.