Are Vacations Really About Leisure For Moms?

Taking some time off, resting, and travelling often seem neutral and universal concepts. However, most vacations require women to keep working behind the scenes. From planning and organising the trips to following the schedule, as well as packing, cooking, dressing children and looking after them, taking care of important documents, and pandering to everyone’s egos in between, remains largely confined to the feminine sphere.

Why Women Can't Catch a Break

For most women, ‘time off’ begins with a suitcase full of everyone else’s needs. It has often been argued that women’s wars are fought not on battlefields but within the domestic sphere.

If not catering to everyone’s demands at home while cooking, cleaning, dusting, doing laundry, they need to look after everything on a vacation as well.

In contrast, for most men, vacation means a break from both paid work and domestic work. A family trip may be framed as a “break,” but childcare, emotional labour, and mental load persist. 

Fathers on vacation may be praised for “helping,” while mothers are expected to manage without recognition. This dynamic reinforces the idea that women’s labour is natural and continuous, rather than work that deserves rest.

Vacation as a Measure of Worth

Furthermore, a vacation is a luxury. Most occupational fields continue to be male-dominated and offer paid leave, along with the idea of having “earned” a vacation after working hard.

Women who are socially compelled to informal, unpaid care work, and unequal distribution of household chores do not share the same vocabulary or rules.

Rest is inherently tied to worth. When women, especially mothers, take time purely for themselves, it can be seen as selfish or irresponsible. This moral pressure limits women’s ability to claim leisure as a right rather than a reward.

Even when time off exists on paper, women are less able to take it due to expectations of caregiving around responsibility and availability.

In short, vacation is not just about rejuvenating and travelling; it’s about power, labour, and social expectations. Until care work is more equally shared and rest is culturally valued for everyone, vacations will continue to reflect gender inequality.

Views expressed by the author are their own.