“Working woman” is no longer a new term in Bangladeshi Culture. In addition to those special feature pages in the mainstream newspapers these days we are seeing TV shows highlighting women’s careers, success stories, and issues concerning working women. The focus is really to encourage women to join the workforce and feel them welcome in this arena. In all these TV shows, newspaper columns women guests are asked how they manage the balance between their work and other household responsibilities like cooking, parenting etc – traditionally known as “women’s responsibilities”.

It sometimes makes me curious, are we really making the room for women to work outside home when we are keeping the same expectation that they will take care of their all other traditional responsibilities even though they work outside? Managing household duties and children alone is a 24/7 job, and it is literally impossible for a woman to fulfill those when she is also working fulltime outside home. Naturally other grown up people in the household has to take more responsibility to keep the house running and in most of the cases the other significant people in the household are the husband and sometimes the in-law family.

Many of my (working or not) female friends say, their husbands do a pretty decent job of cooking, taking care of the kids and some other household duties. This trend is very encouraging. Many of this new generation Bangladeshi men have started a silent revolution; they are continuously proving their expertise in the household works that has been under the control of women only. Even though the Mom’s of 70’s never imagined their adorable boys working inside home, some brave men are really out there breaking the tradition.

As the saying goes, “behind every successful man there is a woman”, it is also true that behind every successful woman there is a man. It is time to recognize those men for their hard work and support to keep the women pursue their career. It is time to write columns, create TV shows showcasing those heroes who are truly helping to empower the women. Men working in the kitchen should become a style for the new generation. Celebrity men should be interviewed about their cooking and parenting skills. When are we going to see a TV host asking this question to a male guest, “How do you manage your kids, home when your wife is working?”?