A few years ago, a Danish boyfriend asked me to cook an Indian meal for a cozy evening together. It seemed obvious, because even though I now live in Denmark, I was born and raised in New Delhi. However, my boyfriend was quite surprised to learn that I don’t ’enjoy’ cooking. Who doesn’t like spending time in the kitchen, preparing Instagram-worthy meals and discussing the quality of various ingredients?
I understand why cooking is often a pleasurable activity in Denmark, but as an Indian woman, it’s hard for me not to associate it with something rather problematic. Indian cuisine is incredibly extensive, requiring a lengthy list of ingredients, spices, and herbs, and it takes a very long time. An Indian lunch alone often calls for many dishes, meaning a woman spends hours in the kitchen so she and her family can enjoy the meal. It’s a far cry from the typical Danish lunch of rye bread, which takes no more than three minutes to assemble.
While this exchange was a shock for my then-boyfriend, for me, it was a reminder of how different my life would have been had I stayed in India.
In 2023, Denmark was ranked as the absolute best country in the world to be a woman based on inclusion, justice, and security in a study conducted by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security. Recently, another study showed that foreigners living in Denmark are happier than the Danes themselves. As a woman and of different ethnic origin in Denmark, I have experienced this firsthand.
It’s a deeply moving realization: If my life had continued outside the Nordic region – whether it was in New York or New Delhi, Nairobi or Naples – I wouldn’t have had the freedom or opportunity to just be.
Firstly, I must mention my privileges. When I lived in India, I attended an all-girls school and later an all-girls college. This was my parents’ way of ensuring I was in a protected, ’safe’ environment because, of course, »mixed-gender schools can lead to problems«, they believed. At home, I categorically escaped helping with cooking and cleaning – something afforded to me because I was a girl from an urban, educated middle-class home in Delhi where domestic help was available. Avoiding countless hours in the kitchen preparing meals for men and then cleaning up after them was the path to liberation for a girl in a wealthy home
Even though we paid for some of it, it was still my mother and other women in my family who did most of the household work.
The West perceives there is plenty of help in India and other parts of Asia. While this may be true for the middle and upper classes, the burden of expectations to manage the home and provide childcare at the cost of one’s own growth, creativity, or career is something that overwhelmingly weighs down women across classes. Add to that the fact that Indian women still can’t move safely in public, often can’t choose their career or spouse, and rarely see other women represented in politics and other relevant societal professions. It’s a bitter truth that persists and is something even the most patriotic Indian woman cannot ignore.
When I talk to my old female classmates, who are now in their forties and have stayed in India, several of them tell me they’ve chosen to be ’alone’ – that is, without a husband or children. This could very well have been my life in India too, where many urban, educated women choose a life free from housework, husband, and children, as raising children is still unequal and childcare is expensive.
They talk about it as having ’dodged the marriage bullet’. It’s their way of protecting their individual freedom and pursuing a life where they are the central figure, not just a supporting character in the lives of men and children. This could very well have been my life had I stayed in Delhi.
Ironically and perhaps surprisingly, I live a fairly mainstream life in Denmark – with a husband, a child, two stepchildren, and regular household chores alongside a full-time career. The difference between my life here and my potential life in India is that in Denmark, I have plenty of space for my ’self’ to coexist with a ’we’ in the partnership and family. Not even just coexist – thrive!
After 18 years in Denmark, I am Indo-Danish or Danish-Indian. Whatever you call it, I belong to both of these worlds and know them intimately. It gives me the freedom to know, live, and appreciate the differences.
Eighteen years ago, I moved to Denmark – almost by accident – and exchanged my fate and reality as an Indian woman for something entirely different. As an Indian woman in Denmark, I learned what freedom looks like – for example, the freedom and opportunity to be mobile on my own without being accompanied by a male figure to ’protect’ me. I learned at the mature age of 29 to cycle in Copenhagen, and I can now get around everywhere on my own.
Similarly, I suddenly experienced the ability to eat out ’solo’ without having to deal with annoying comments or unwanted attention. There is great freedom in this anonymity, in being invisible. No man in Denmark bothers to stare at me or watch what I’m doing, who I’m talking to, who I’m holding hands with, or living with. A woman’s life is not regulated, monitored, judged, or altered. She is her own person and can just be.
I now also know what equality looks like. Managing a home and raising children is a collaboration and a joint effort between my partner and me. I also have the ability to say no – to both my husband and my boss at work – because society allows me to prioritize myself and my well-being. I don’t have to be the ever-agreeable ’good girl’.
And one shouldn’t underestimate how important it is to be reminded that all opportunities are available. In Denmark, I see women working as everything from bus drivers to prime ministers.
After 18 years in Denmark, and now as a new Danish citizen, these realizations are deeply moving.
Unfortunately, I see young women who have grown up in Denmark taking these privileges for granted. This is evident, for example, in my teenage stepdaughter. Simply because they don’t know the other reality in large parts of the world, where being a woman is so full of challenges. A privilege Danish women have fought hard for over the last 100 years and which I reap the benefits of today.
It’s these advantages and privileges that I constantly try to remind the next generation of young women about in Denmark.
