The Invisible War: The Silent Battles Women Fight Everyday

A few days ago, while scrolling through Instagram, I came across a quote that stuck with me. “Jab tak peeth par bachche ko bandh kar rankshetra me koodti na dikhe stree, sansar ye manta hi nahi ki har kshan ek yudh lad rhi h stree” – Unless a woman is seen jumping into the battlefield with a child tied to her back, the world doesn’t believe a woman is fighting a war every moment. This single line reflects the nature of the society we live in, where women face society’s judgment at every stage of life. Rani Lakshmibai fighting the British with her child tied to her back is a celebrated moment in Indian history. But unless a woman performs an act equivalent to this, society barely acknowledges her struggles. Some might find this irrelevant in 2025. “It’s not the old times,” they say. “People believe in equal treatment now. Women don’t have to fight for equality and dignity anymore.” I’ve heard this many times, and my response is always the same: if you want to see how much society has truly progressed for women, look at the grassroots level, i.e., rural India. I spent the first ten years of my life in rural Haryana and remain connected to my roots. I’ve seen women excel at household chores while mastering craft skills like bunai, kadhai, and silai (knitting, embroidery, stitching). I’ve witnessed intelligent women unable to pursue their dreams simply because they weren’t allowed to. To illustrate how women fight wars every moment, I’m sharing stories of the women around me, inspired by Manu Bhandari’s “Mere Sang Ki Auratein.”

My Grandmother: The Businesswoman Who Never Was

My grandmother is incredibly hardworking. Even at her age, she cannot sit idly and is always busy with some household task. Sometimes I have to convince her to rest. She excels at traditional Haryanvi crafts like dari, crochet, and knitting. Her words are “ Beti kaam toh karam hove” ( Work is worship). Though illiterate, she used to sell cow dung cakes and could calculate profits using her own numerical system. When my sister and I tried teaching her to read, she caught on remarkably quickly. This made me wonder what she could have become if she’d been educated. I could sense her intelligence and am certain she could have been a successful businesswoman. I thought of Schrödinger’s cat, how my grandmother’s potential existed in multiple states until society opened the box and decided her fate. Until education was denied to her, she existed in infinite possibility. She could have been a businesswoman, a scholar, or an innovator. But the moment society saw her only as a girl meant for marriage, all those possibilities collapsed into one reality. In her case, the cat was dead, and the tragedy is that we’ll never know how brilliantly alive it could have been. Her fate was decided at birth when her marriage alliance was arranged. She was so young during her wedding that she was carried in high-hipped platter (called Parant in Haryanvi) for the pheras. She was raised by a single mother, an iron lady who made a brave choice for those times. While widows were typically married to their brothers-in-law, her mother chose to remain single and raise her children alone. My grandma was very close to her mother. After growing up, my grandma moved to her in-laws’ house. She missed her mother the most. She became efficient at everything — field work alongside household management, raising two children mostly on her own. She and Grandpa didn’t get along well. She was made to believe she wasn’t beautiful, which is often reflected in her statements today. I can’t even imagine how a 16-year-old girl could work so hard and yet feel so completely alone. Society viewed this as normal; every girl was expected to endure this. Her pain, loneliness, and silent struggles were never visible because they didn’t meet society’s standards of struggle. I don’t know how she survived with grace, but perhaps that’s why she’s so concerned about her granddaughters’ education. Just yesterday, she was explaining to me the importance of financial independence, seeing education as the only escape from a life of struggle. Despite everything she’s been through, she remains incredibly compassionate. She takes care of my bedridden grandfather every single day and night, never once turning away. I often question myself about how someone who’s received so little kindness can still give so much of it. Her forgiveness, her strength, her tireless dedication, they humble me.

Two Sisters, Two Mothers: A Tale of Sacrifice

The next story is of my mothers. Mothers, yes, in plural. I have two mothers. Like Shree Krishna, I also have my Devaki and Yashoda. Given birth by the one and raised by the other. To understand this, first you need to read about my family structure. My grandma has 2 sons, i.e, my Papa and Bade Papa. They both married two real sisters, i.e., my Mumma and Bade Mumma. I call both sets of parents Papa and Mumma only. The initial of Bade is for your understanding. So, my mumma gave birth to me, but in my prime years, I was raised by my Bade mummy and papa. The first 10 years of my life, I lived in my village in a joint family. After that, all of us siblings and our Bade mummy and papa moved to the city for better schooling. So Bade mummy papa raised us, 5 kids, all those years. My parents, grandparents, and great-grandmother moved in with us when I was in the second year of College.

My Bade Mumma is the woman I admire the most out of everyone I know. She is intelligent, mature, beautiful, skillful—truly everything all at once. Since my childhood, I’ve seen her remain calm even in the toughest situations, somehow knowing how to handle everything. She often tells me how much she loved studying, especially Mathematics—it was her favorite subject. She was our very first teacher. Before we ever stepped into a school, she taught us all the basics at home. I still remember how she helped me with my homework, especially the day she taught me how to draw angles using a compass. While most kids my age struggled with it, it felt effortless for me, only because she taught me with such patience and clarity. But her talents don’t stop there. She’s not only a great cook but also an amazing seamstress. All she needed was one look at a design, and she could recreate it perfectly in no time. When I was a child, all my clothes, tops, skirts, and dresses were stitched by her, and I used to flaunt them with Pride. Honestly, if she had had the opportunity to study at a place like NIFT, I have no doubt she would have become an incredible fashion designer.

She was merely 11 years old when she got married, with only a blurred memory of her wedding day. At the age of 16 or 18 (not sure), she moved in with her in-laws, still holding on to her love for studying. With her family’s support, she managed to complete her graduation through open schooling. But when she became a mother, her dreams quietly slipped away. Education took a backseat to raising a child in a new family, in a new world. Her only comfort then was her younger sister, always by her side. But that too changed when she moved to the city with Bade Papa and all five of us children, for better education for us. One of my cousins also moved in with us for college. With Bade Papa away at work all day, she raised six of us (all of different age groups) on her own in an unfamiliar city, without her sister by her side. I can’t begin to fathom the silent battles she fought that time. She couldn’t study further; she lived away from her little sister so that we could have better education, better opportunities.

My Chote Mumma is a gentle, cheerful soul—naive in the most innocent way. She has always lived in the shadow of her elder sister, following her lead in everything. Unfamiliar with the harshness of the world, she was content in her own little world. As a child, she never enjoyed studying and was genuinely happy when she got married, because to her, marriage meant freedom from school. Still, she completed her matric, inspired by her elder sister’s footsteps. After going to her in-laws’ house, she learnt all the household work. But somehow it was never enough for my grandma. But her escape and comfort, her elder sister was always there to support and encourage her. She was not very skilled in sewing or knitting, but she was a strong woman in every sense of the word. She handled all the physically demanding work like cutting and preparing fodder for the livestock, milking them, pounding millets (Bajra Kootna), and other tasks that required strength, endurance, and grit. At one point, she even taught underprivileged children for a few months as part of a government scheme. She proudly tells me how she earned ₹60,000 back then, a remarkable amount for those times. I still remember visiting her classes after school, sitting quietly among the other children, learning from her, admiring her with silent wonder. After we moved to the city, her comfort was lost. Separated from her sister, she suddenly had to make decisions on her own, manage the household alone, and, most painfully, live away from her children. She spent the prime of her youth serving her in-laws while her children lived elsewhere for a better education. No words can truly capture how lonely those years must have been for her. And yet, she did it all, silently, selflessly, so her children could have a good future.

The Invisible War Continues

I shared the stories of the women in my life to help you understand how deeply women face internal battles every single day. Yes, men also have their share of struggles, but the difference is, their struggles are often acknowledged and admired by society. Women, on the other hand, endure countless silent storms. Their sacrifices have been so normalized that they’ve almost lost their meaning in the eyes of society. During my mother’s and grandmother’s time, society was very different. Today, much has changed; sex ratios have improved, literacy rates among women have gone up, and women are walking shoulder to shoulder with men in every field. Society has progressed for women’s education, but not for a progressive woman. Every day, I meet women with unfulfilled dreams and the fire to conquer the world—yet they remain confined by the expectations of their families or by society at large. Girls are taught, educated, and encouraged to succeed—but with conditions. They must marry at a “suitable” age. They must be efficient in everything: skilled, obedient, respectful, soft-spoken, and accommodating. They are expected to keep pace with society, but if they move faster, they are quickly labelled—too loud, too bold, too opinionated, or too modern.

Women are expected to carry the burden of preserving culture. If they don’t behave in a certain way—if they speak up, express themselves freely, or dress as they please—they are accused of ruining tradition. But men? Men face no such limits. They are rarely questioned, hardly ever judged by the same standards. If a woman works, she is expected to balance both her job and the household flawlessly. In every celebrity divorce, somehow it is always the woman who is blamed. Men are rarely held accountable. This reflects the deeply rooted mindset of our society. Today, whether she is working or not, from a city or a village, a woman is fighting daily battles, most of which are invisible. Because society believes this is just how things are supposed to be. A girl moves in with her in-laws? Not a big deal, that’s expected. A woman working outside? She better prove her worth, or she won’t be respected. A housewife? That’s not even considered “work.” All of this is seen as normal by men, by society. But they remain oblivious to the emotional and mental toll of even the most basic roles a woman plays as a wife, mother, or daughter. Some of you reading this might find it “too much.” Some of you might deeply relate. That’s okay, because all our viewpoints are shaped by our own experiences. But even if my experience reflects the reality of just 10% of the women around me, it’s still unfair. Because no one deserves to live a life where their struggles are ignored, their dreams dismissed, and their silence mistaken for acceptance.

The most profound realization that emerges from these stories is that the women in my family, and countless others like them scattered across villages and cities, have been quietly rewriting the definitions of strength, courage, and resilience all along. They simply needed society to stop being blind to the heroism that was unfolding in kitchens, fields, and small rooms where children learned their first lessons. They’ve been fighting battles against societal expectations, financial constraints, limited opportunities, and their own suppressed ambitions – often all at once, often in silence. The tragedy isn’t that they fought these battles. The tragedy is that we’ve normalized their struggles to the point of invisibility. We’ve become so accustomed to women’s sacrifices that we’ve stopped seeing them as choices worthy of admiration. We’ve grown so comfortable with women’s resilience that we’ve forgotten to marvel at their strength.

The question that keeps me awake at night is: When will we finally start seeing them? When will we develop the emotional intelligence to recognize that every woman managing a household while pursuing her own dreams is performing daily miracles? When will we understand that every mother who puts her aspirations on hold without losing her sense of self is demonstrating a form of strength that deserves reverence? The answer to that question will determine not just how we honor the women of the past, but how we empower the women of the future. Because until we learn to see the warriors who are already among us, we’ll keep waiting for women to tie babies to their backs and jump into battlefields before we acknowledge that they’ve been fighting wars all along.