Mother’s Day is approaching, and I am not even halfway through my flower dedication to mothers. My thoughts around women, especially those in mothering roles, not having rest have not changed either. This week, however, my focus has shifted. It is no longer about small, everyday frustrations like my younger brother constantly asking where his socks are. 

It is about something deeper: how most of these women have never really had anything for themselves. Nothing creative, nothing leisurely, nothing that is simply theirs.

I recently read ‘Things Fall Apart‘, and I could not help but notice how the men in the story had time. Okonkwo and the other men would sit together, drink palm wine, talk and pass the time. Whether it was after a long day or simply because they could, there was space for them to exist outside of responsibility. 

For women, that space looked very different. We often reduce it to just sitting under the tree, koshi yomti, and dismiss it as gossip. It has become something we mock, something we use to judge women. But when you really look at it, that was never just leisure. That was survival.

During certain seasons, women would gather not just to talk, but to work and support one another. They would collect puukungungu, sit together and help each other carry what needed to be done. Those conversations held more than stories; they held solutions, comfort and community. If you have read ‘Purple Violet of Oshaantu‘, you will remember Mee Kauna. After she was abused by Tate Shange, it was not systems or institutions that came to her aid first. It was other women. They showed up and made sure her field was cultivated, making sure she would survive when the harvest season came. 

That was not gossip, that was care.

Even then, what looked like rest for women was still tied to responsibility. It was still about giving, supporting and holding everything together. And in many ways, that has not changed. The setting may be different now, the players may have changed, but the script remains the same. 

Today, women have to find time within already full schedules just to meet, talk, and breathe. Between work, children, relationships and everything else, those moments are squeezed in, not freely lived. And even then, not all women have the freedom to speak openly. Some come from homes where their opinions are not welcomed, where being heard is still something they have to fight for. So even the little time they do get is not always theirs.

We often say things are better now, that women have more space than before, but space for what? If a woman still has to carry everything, still has to show up for everyone else before herself, still has to negotiate her right to be heard, then what has really changed? Maybe the issue is not whether women have time. Maybe it is whether that time has ever truly belonged to them.

*Frieda Mukufa’s lifestyle section in the New Era concentrates on women-related issues and parenting. She specialises in editing research proposals, proofreading and content creation. – etuholefrieda@ gmail.com