I
did not mean to write a post for Women’s Day. I find it rather tiring to wake
up in the morning and remind myself of my gender. I’d rather be just a human
being. Wouldn't that actually solve a lot of problems, if people spent less
time and energy asserting their masculinity or femininity, and treated each
other merely as fellow human beings? Anyway, so here is the reason why I
decided to write on a women’s issue at this point. All my Bengali readers take
a look at this article. For those who cannot read Bengali, I apologise for not translating
the entire essay. Here is a quick summary for them: The writer, one Swati Bhattacharya,
has put forward the view that it is women’s attraction for and contribution
towards all sorts of household chores – from cleaning and cooking to gardening
and knitting – that has caused them to lag behind in the job market. The writer
feels that the pursuit of such ‘banal’ and ‘petty’ activities makes women less
willing to take up careers – something that would have automatically meant their
‘transcendence’ (uttaran) into better
lives. She gives some valid examples about how there are much fewer women than men
in most professions – journalism and writing and scientific research for
example. She feels this is due to the fact that women have internalized the
age-old dictum of their places being in homes and kitchens. She has lamented
about how patriarchy has brainwashed women into wanting to return to the very
families that abuse and torture them, and even, in some extreme cases, take
their lives. She ends with the metaphor of prisoners wanting to return to their
incarceration after the jail has been destroyed in order to free them: she
feels that no amount of external freedom and opportunities can really free
women unless they can throw away the ‘shackles’ that household work represents.
While
I agree in spirit with the point Ms Bhattacharya has tried to raise about
increasing participation of women in different fields of work, I am infuriated
by the reasons offered by her for the gender divide in jobs. I have several
things to say in this regard, so I will address the writer for the rest of this
post.
Dear
Ms Bhattacharya,
I am
a fairly educated, independent, discerning young woman of the 21st century,
brought up in a highly liberal family. I have career ambitions and high hopes
for my future, and I am sorry to see so few of my classmates having the same. I
have never been indoctrinated by the ideas of a ‘woman’s place’ and gender
roles. But I have been deeply insulted and pained by the views you have
expressed in your article for Women’s Day. I am guessing you are a feminist; I
am not. I believe in rights of a much broader sort: human rights. I believe in the right every single human being has
to decide what sort of life s/he wants for herself or himself. Every single
person has the right to live exactly as one wants to, as long as one is not
doing this by hurting or unduly infringing upon the same rights of those around
oneself.
Don’t
feminists always shout themselves hoarse about how men are always telling them what to do and how to live
their lives? Well, Ms Bhattacharya, what makes you think that just because you
are a woman yourself, you have a
right to dictate to other women about how to live good lives? What gave you the
idea that the path shown by you is the only one that will lead to the
liberation of women? Have you not noticed that you are doing the very thing
that feminists always blame men for doing: trying to enforce your opinions on
fellow human beings who are quite capable of making their own decisions –
because for some reason you think you are superior?
Speaking
of liberation, why should this word have only one interpretation: yours? You
have understood liberation in one way; other people might have very different opinions.
Personally, I find the Islamic burqa a rather restrictive device, and would
hate to have to wear one. However, there are thousands of Muslim women – and not
just uneducated religious fanatics – who claim that they find a certain
freedom behind their veils, and wear them of their own volition without any
male ever trying to enforce it. As my friend commented in the previous post, to
each his own, and the sign of true civilization would be the acceptance of such
differences without the automatic presumption of one’s own opinion being the
only worthwhile one.
You
say that it is the importance that women give to household work that has led to
their lower interest in career building. Many women give up their jobs once
they get married or have children, because they want to devote all their time
to their families. I have thought about this at some length. I think that
in this matter a lot depends, or should depend, on the individual under
consideration. There are surely many women in our society who would have liked
to build their own careers – however small or big – and are forced into, albeit
not always through abuse, choosing familial responsibilities over career-building.
These women have my full sympathy, and I think it is a shame that even today
women are compelled to make this choice without any support from either their
spouses or their parents. But what you, Ms Bhattacharya, have tried to assert is
that all women make this choice under
compulsion, and all women would have
done better to choose careers over families. Now there are two things that I want
to say in this context: firstly, this idea of having to choose is not a
worldwide concept. Women in many countries have been juggling families and careers
for many years now. It is very much possible, and once our society – both men and
women – start accepting this more readily, this problem of choice will
hopefully subside. Secondly, for all the women out there who willingly choose
to build homes rather than careers, who are you to say whether their choice has
been right, or even good?
You
talk of how the only thing worth doing is bringing about ‘transcendence’ of the
human condition. Let us consider the many women who do take up various
professions. You are a journalist yourself. Think of all the page three
material that journalists write about on a daily basis. Is that transcendence? Many
women take up teaching in schools as a preferred career. Having recently finished
my fourteen year long school life, I will say that the biggest contribution of
my teachers in my life have been bitter memories. School teachers spend a large
part of their time thinking up ways in which to torment, irritate, gag and
manipulate their pupils. By choosing to build careers, these women have
permanently tarnished the reputation of schools and the experiences of
students. And the many women who take up jobs in various IT companies, earn
pittances and then waste it on exorbitant objects of self-beautification, and spend
all their free time moving their backsides in discotheques trying to attract
males of the very same mental level: have they
achieved ‘transcendence’ of any sort? You have used the word uttaran, which translates into ‘transcendence’,
but can also mean ‘climbing up’. Do monkeys also achieve uttaran when they jump
up walls?
The ISIS
think they are bringing about transcendence of the human condition by chopping off
the heads of all non-believers. Hitler thought the same when he tried to make
the Germans the master race and exterminate all Jews and anybody else who did
not fit into his description of the ideal Aryan. Maybe you will call their
actions progressive and ask all your fellow working women to mete out the same
treatment to their non-working contemporaries? And if not, why not? Because
their views don’t agree with yours? Or because you feel comfortable to think
that your views somehow have to be right?
And
now I come to the part that I find the most offensive of all. You call
household chores banal and petty. How dare you? Who on earth gave you the right
to decide what is petty and what is important? You say that there is no glory
in making a perfectly shaped luchi:
and I suppose it is so much more glorious to be a saleswoman in a supermarket
or a grumpy ticket seller in a government bus station? Or maybe, a journalist
who writes on topics which are ‘in’ at the moment? And why should everybody
have to chase glory anyway? If I enjoy cleaning and decorating my home and cooking
for my family, I am one happy woman doing these things, and my family is one
happy family with a warm and cosy home to come back to. So what if I am not
helping to take forward some ‘greater cause’? Maybe I have found happiness and
fulfillment in my life that way: why do you grudge me that? In the example you
give of your writer friend lamenting about how her acquaintance gave up a
career in writing in favour of gardening and looking after the dog, all I can
say is that just because you may not love dogs it doesn't mean that all women mustn't!
You say that somebody else could have fed the dog while this girl honed her
writing skills. I suppose you will laud only the woman who lets somebody else
bring up her children and look after her aged and ill parents while she concentrates
upon her career. After all, parents and children are part of the family, that
prison-like system that prevents women from becoming (mostly) professional
mediocrities!
Are you
yourself a pathetic cook who has never been able to tell the difference
between tea and kalo jeera, and keep
your room like a permanent battleground, depending on your mother or your
daughter or your maid for looking after your daily needs, while you can look
down on them with scorn from your throne of a woman who earns her own living?
If that is so, I have nothing but pity for you. Yours is a pathetic lot indeed;
having failed to do anything of real significance in your career (from starting
your own company to a charitable institution that does some real work for deprived women to writing
a great book), you are now taking out your frustration by sneering upon women
who perhaps have found happiness in
life through their families and households. Believe me, there are millions of
such women all around the world. Thankfully, your voice is really of little
consequence: I will still go on keeping house and indulging in my feminine
interests like knitting and cooking and colour coordinating upholstery, and
hopefully my husband and children will derive much pleasure from these one day,
just as my parents do now.
But
be thankful that you and I shall never meet, for I’ll make sure to put salt
instead of sugar in your coffee and darn your white dress with black thread –
just to remind you of the significance of household activities and of those who
take these activities seriously.
