A Woman's Work Is Never Done

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‘The woman is wife and mother. But, for her, this role is a function of an abstract duty. So she is not this woman, irreducible to her singularity, wife of this man, who is himself also irreducible, any more than she is this mother of this child or these children. She is only attributed that singularity from the perspective man, for whom she remains bound to natural immediacy. As far as she is concerned, she is a wife and mother inasmuch as these roles represented a task vis-à-vis the universal which she discharges by renouncing her singular desires… In other words, a woman’s love is defined as familial and civil duty. She has no right to singular love not to love for herself.’

Luce Irigaray (Philosopher, The Sex which is not one, 1977)