Recently, an image went viral of a female constable on duty on a railway platform, with her baby strapped to her. The Railway Protection Special Force constable was on duty following the deadly stampede at New Delhi Railway Station on February 15, 2025. The image, with #NariShakti, was shared by the official X handle of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) lauding the constable’s commitment to her duties. But what about the protection she is owed as an employee and as a mother? Why did a new mother have to bring her baby into a high-risk situation?

Soon after the image was shared, many comments on X followed the same rhetoric. This is true feminism, they claimed. But the lack of all feminist ideals was painfully obvious in this situation. Constable Reena deserved better from her employer.

Why did she not have access to a crèche while on duty?

Is the RPSF so under-staffed that a woman with no help at home to look after her baby had to be called back from leave and put in a high-risk post?

Why could she not have been shifted to a less risky station if she did not have access to childcare?

Are we always going to treat human beings as machines in this country? Will we never think of the need for stricter labour laws?

Work-life balance or an unfair burden on women?

This is not the first instance of women being praised to the high heavens for “balancing” work and parenthood. In April 2020, Srijana Gummalla, then the chief of Vishakhapatnam’s municipal body, went back to work a month after giving birth to her son. Images of Srijana holding her son while working in office went viral online. In October of the same year, Saumya Pandey, then the sub-divisional magistrate in Modinagar, went viral because she brought her three-week-old daughter to work. Every news publication in India praised both women’s “commendable dedication to duty” and highlighted quotes on how women can do it all, even during a deadly pandemic.

If there was truly a balance, however, women would not have to cradle their newborns at work. In the crowd of posts praising “super moms”, no one stops to question why these women could not use their legal right to maternity leave or where the fathers of these babies were. Are we to assume they are single moms? Because if they have to bring their children to work in the most trying circumstances, they might as well be. Or were their offices so under-staffed that they could not get away from work even after giving birth?

Why do we still see women as primary caregivers?

At a job interview, soon after I got married, I was asked, “Are you planning to have kids? Not that it’s a problem, of course, we just need to know. We need someone who can give us 5-6 years at least, you know.” Does my desire to have kids or stay child-free have to be on my resume now?

Here’s the problem with asking this question in an interview – you pry into a sensitive area of a candidate’s personal life without knowing whether or not she has fertility issues, you assume that a woman will stop working after she has children, you don’t even pretend to consider a man could take care of his own child, and you tell her, without saying the words that could land you in legal trouble, that if she says she is planning to have kids, she’s not going to get this job.

It is this mindset that then prompts women to become “super moms” and do it all. Because if they don’t, they might get fired or demoted and lose the progress they made in their careers.

And then we wonder why more women are choosing not to have children

After decades of talking about gender equality, it is astounding that we still don’t place the responsibility of childcare on men. What good are appreciative news articles if we’re doing nothing to go further into the story and highlight the very obvious problems driving a “super mom”? So, the next time you see a woman working and carrying her child, don’t praise “the strength of a woman”. Instead, question why she needs to be that strong. The answers will be easy to see if you want to see them.

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