February 11, 2010

Role Reversal

I am not a feminist and I certainly do not hate men. That would be a stupid thing to do .
But I like it today when I see women working, all on their own and when i see they have a life outside the world of "fulfilling others needs". When on my way to work i see women rushing to their work after probably sending their kids and husband away. I feel amazed, inspired and proud of my species .
My generation of people are unpopular for their notoriety of ideas and philosophies. There are lesser strings attached and we tend to customize our responsibilities as per our convenience. The women of my mother’s age inspire me because I see them at the same place as I am with no slack cut out for them. It must have been quite a struggle. The middle generation definitely bears the brunt for the convenience we have at our disposal.
Look around. You will get what am I trying to say?
We give example of women like Indra Nooyi, Pratibha Patil, Sheila Dixit, Kiran Bedi. These women are iconic and probably inspire million of young girls today. But I wonder how different these women are from the ones I have been talking about.
By drawing a parallel with the achievements of these women, has the Indian woman finally broken those invisible shackles?
This question speaks for itself........"invisible shackles"......of course women today are way past that time when sati was a pratha.....education for them did not exist.. ..they had to execute the defined roles in the house ......nothing more than that as we have been living in the male dominated society......
Things have changed and now women live in a society where men are liberally dominating but that edge still exists today. There cannot be a yes or no or may be for this question. The picture remains grey like most of the realistic things in life.
Here is the white picture.......if we look at Indra Nooyi and similar women making the headlines today.... we would definitely say that yeah women have broken the shackles ..........they are corporate executives, journalists, astronauts, actress, models and what not. They have a family and they have a greater liberty of customizing the responsibilities like I said. This is the no shackle picture.....where they exercise freedom in all forms.....

The black picture is taken from the lives of those girls in comparatively undeveloped cities of India, they are still living the same life. The difference being that they are now educated to execute those defined roles. In Rajasthan, a girl child is still killed and they are still married minors.

Here is the grey picture...which I feel actually exists for the majority. Here women can exercise their freedom only if they can juggle it with their traditional duties. Not much has changed for a man in this male dominated society in fact it has become more convenient as women can assist them financially in building a household. It is not a sole but a shared responsibility for a man. Women in turn, took up added responsibilities to be where they are today….even the ones in the forbes list.

2 comments:

Prachi said...

thanks vrinda :)

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