Racing Against the Clock: Motherhood, Artificial Intelligence, and Women’s Time in the Modern Workplace

A Silent Clock Ticking Within

This essay is not just a personal reflection. It’s the collective voice of women who wake up wondering, “Am I running out of time?”Of those climbing the career ladder while quietly dreaming of holding a child.Of women whose biological clock ticks out of sync with workplace calendars and algorithmic productivity.

Motherhood is not simply a biological event—it’s a deep existential call.Yet that call often crashes into the hard walls of modern work culture and digital acceleration.Artificial intelligence optimizes time, but it still doesn’t recognize the most sacred kind of time a woman holds: the time to create life.

1. Biological Time vs. Capitalist Timelines

Female fertility has a defined biological window. According to the World Health Organization (2021), fertility declines significantly after the age of 35.Coincidentally, these are also the years when most women are expected to lead, accelerate, and “prove” themselves professionally. So begins the inner conflict:“If not now, when?” vs. “If now, what will I lose?”

This isn’t indecision. It’s a systemic design flaw that fails to recognize the temporal needs of women.

This is not just a personal dilemma. It is a structural injustice.

2. The Burden of “Supermotherhood” and Neoliberal Femininity

Sociologist Sharon Hays (1996) coined the term intensive mothering to describe the unrealistic expectation that modern mothers must be ever-present, emotionally attuned, and entirely self-sacrificing.Meanwhile, the neoliberal workplace demands that women remain hyper-productive, endlessly flexible, and emotionally detached from caregiving roles.

This dual pressure creates an impossible balancing act:Be both the perfect employee and the perfect mother—simultaneously.Many women internalize failure, not realizing that the system was never built for both roles to thrive at once (Fraser, 2013).

The world splits women in half, but expects them to operate whole.

3. Artificial Intelligence: A New Pressure in Disguise?

AI tools promise efficiency.They summarize meetings, automate content, optimize calendars.But here’s the deeper problem:They’re designed to help us keep working—not to help us pause, reflect, or conceive.

The logic of AI is built upon productivity norms that often ignore the non-linear, cyclical, and emotional dimensions of women’s lives.There’s no room in most algorithms for menstrual cycles, fertility treatments, or caregiving shifts. AI, for all its intelligence, is still a tool of a patriarchal pace.

The intelligence may be artificial, but the pressure is real.

4. “Family-Friendly” Workplaces: Progress or Publicity?

Some companies boast of being “family-friendly.”But the statistics tell a different story. In Turkey, for example, only 30% of women return to work after maternity leave (TÜİK, 2022).Globally, women still hide pregnancy during job interviews, miss promotions after giving birth, and carry the guilt of “choosing family over success.”

As feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser (2013) points out, neoliberalism turns women’s liberation into private responsibility rather than public policy. You can work, but only if you handle motherhood alone.

Women don’t need favors. They need fairness.

5. A New Vision: To Birth and Build

Women want more than children.They want to create businesses, lead movements, shape futures.But these forms of creation should not be seen as mutually exclusive.

The workplace—and artificial intelligence—must evolve to accommodate human cycles, not override them.We need systems that recognize the value of pausing, of gestating ideas, of caring as a form of labor.

Women’s productivity cannot be measured only in deliverables. It must include their power to generate, nurture, and sustain life.

Closing: A Global Manifesto for Women’s Time

This is not a complaint.This is a call.

To companies:Do not just offer parental leave. Expect women to return. Do not just provide AI tools. Design them for human rhythms. Do not just market inclusivity. Build it.

To women:You are not asking for too much. You are asking for space to be whole. To give life—to a child, a company, or a cause—is your sacred right.

We are more than our timelines.We are the ones who birth them.And in this race against the code, we demand to be seen—not just optimized.

References (APA Style)

• D’Ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. (2020). Data Feminism. MIT Press.

• Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. Verso.

• Hays, S. (1996). The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. Yale University Press.

• International Labour Organization (ILO). (2023). Gender Equality in the World of Work.

• Mahalingam, R. (2011). Essentialism, culture, and beliefs about gender among the Tamil diaspora in the United States. Sex Roles, 64(9–10), 714–725.

• Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK). (2022). Labour Force Statistics.

• World Health Organization (WHO). (2021). Infertility: A Priority for WHO.