I'm a little confused. I don't see anywhere in the article that it says women have a tougher row to hoe. I think a problem I see a lot within Orthodoxy is an unspoken (well, sometimes it is spoken) idea that monasticism is better or a higher calling to the point that married people and especially those with children for whom keeping up with the church calendar is almost impossible are made to feel like they can never measure up. Women with small children cannot be in the church every time the door is open. I know I've been made to feel that way many times....basically that I'm not a "good enough" Christian because I don't live a monastic life with its prayer and service schedules. I think this article is pointing out that motherhood, especially, demands such selflessness of people that its results, when done right, are the same as those of monk or nun who devotes their whole lives to the "contemplation". We can live a life of prayer just as fully and richly as a monastic, not in spite or our calling as wives and mothers, but because of it. That is what I got out of the article.

And I do say "hurrah" to any man or woman that recognizes that. Not that women have a worse lot, but that a woman's "row to hoe" can and does and is DESIGNED to have the same results as a man's or monastic.