International Mother's Day: How it came to be

Mother's Day has become a day that focuses on generally recognizing mothers' and mother figures' roles. Mother's Day has also become an increasingly important event for businesses in recent years. This is particularly true of restaurants and businesses manufacturing and selling cards and gift items.

Hyderabad: In 1908, a woman named Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother, who had died in 1905, at St Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. Her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis was a peace activist, who took care of wounded soldiers in the American Civil War and founder of the Mother’s Day Work Clubs that helped address public health issues. It was Anna who started the tradition of celebrating mother's day.

Owing to her contribution to society, the day which was initially rejected was finally observed as a holiday in 1911 by all US states. Her dedication and Anna’s respect for her mother led to the declaration of Mother’s Day as a national holiday in 1914 by American statesman and lawyer Woodrow Wilson.

It is celebrated differently in other countries. In the UK, the day is observed on the fourth Sunday of March in the memory of Mother Church on Christian Mothering Sunday. In Greece, it is celebrated on February 2. The day is observed on March 21 in many Arab countries. However, most countries celebrate the day on the second Sunday of May, including India.

History of Mother's Day: Julia Ward Howe

The idea of the official celebration of Mothers Day in the US was first suggested by Julia Ward Howe in 1872. An activist, writer and poet, Julia shot to fame with her famous Civil War song, "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Julia Ward Howe suggested that June 2 be annually celebrated as Mother's Day and should be dedicated to peace. She wrote a passionate appeal to women and urged them to rise against war in her famous Mothers Day Proclamation, written in Boston in 1870. She also initiated a Mothers' Peace Day observance on the second Sunday in June in Boston and held the meeting for a number of years. Julia tirelessly championed the cause of the official celebration of Mother's Day and declaration of official holiday on the day. Her idea spread but was later replaced by the Mother's Day holiday now celebrated in May.

Around 1870, Julia Ward Howe called for Mother's Day to be celebrated each year to encourage pacifism and disarmament amongst women. It continued to be held in Boston for about ten years under her sponsorship but died out after that.

The cost of motherhood

About 300,000 women die during and following pregnancy and childbirth each year, according to World Health Organization estimates. That number has dropped, almost 35% between 2000 and 2017, but still remains frustratingly high, especially considering that most maternal deaths are preventable.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), women perform two to 10 times as much unpaid work - including childcare - as men.

One calculation using Bureau of Labor Statistics data to account for all the home management jobs that primary caregivers take on - from preparing meals to planning activities to helping with homework - estimated that a true salary for a mom spiked to a hypothetical $116,000 in the US in 2021.

Studies have also found that working mothers face high costs in terms of leaving the workforce, receiving fair wages and following a competitive career progression. Parental leave policies - when they exist - are too often too little or perpetuate biases that negatively affect women’s careers.

The pandemic has widened these inequalities.

Globally, women's job loss rates due to COVID-19 are almost twice as high as male job loss rates, according to McKinsey estimates.

The analysis suggests that the gendered nature of work caused about one-fourth of these losses: lockdowns shut down many of the industries that are the main employers for women, including hospitality, retail and care-work. But the larger share of economic losses to women arose from societal barriers. School closures forced millions of mothers to leave jobs to take care of their children at home. Mothers of children under 5 and unmarried mothers were among those hit the hardest.

Women have also reported more mental health effects due to the pandemic. For example, a September 2020 study by Care that surveyed 6,200 women and 4,000 men in 38 countries found that women were almost three times as likely as men to report experiencing significant mental health effects, including anxiety, loss of appetite, inability to sleep and trouble completing everyday tasks.

According to the survey, women attributed the sharp rise in unpaid care burdens as the main source of this stress, in addition to concerns about their livelihood, food and healthcare.

All of these setbacks add up. The global gender gap - the time it would take for women to achieve parity with men across economics, education, health and politics - stretched from 99.5 years in 2020 to more than 135 years in 2021.