During one such vacation, I watched with a mix of fascination and sadness my father's cousin sister pleading with her father that she be allowed to continue with her college education. She had completed the undergraduate program in economics, which itself was a notable achievement for those days, and wanted to work on the master's degree.
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| A more recent Pattamadai--in 2005 |
She was one strong-willed woman, but her life was severely circumscribed by the role that men had in society. Thus, when her father flatly negated her plan for higher studies, well, that was the end. I remember getting teary-eyed myself when she was crying--hey, I was a kid!
As a male, I will never truly understand what women went through, and what women go through even now. I merely have a feel for some of the issues they have to grapple with. Issues that typically might not even blip in my male life.
Conditions have changed a lot for women over the decades since that summer when my aunt was devastated that she had to terminate her college plans. Many of my own classmates, for instance, went on to become doctors and scientists and managers. The generations that followed have had more and more choices to choose from.
The array of choices does not mean that life for women has gotten any better. Given the biological aspect that only the female can reproduce, well, it is all the more a struggle to figure out what it is to be a female. It seems very easy for them to get damned if they did and to be damned if they didn't. It is one tough life, I would imagine, to be a woman in this contemporary settings. Perhaps in a strange way even tougher now than it was a few generations ago?
Take the case of Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. Ever since she went on her book tour promoting Lean In and her version of feminism, it has been one heck of a controversy. Of course, that itself is happening while we were still trying to understand whether women can really have it all, or should they simply admit that there are some serious tradeoff decisions to make. Even a question of whether or not a young woman should decide in favor of an MBA is far more complicated than how that same question would be for a typical male.
All these facets--India's villages, women, MBA, corporate executives--interestingly came together in a story in the Wall Street Journal about "Chhavi Rajawat, the current sarpanch of Soda village in Rajasthan, who left a corporate job to help her ancestral village develop."
"Lean in" of a completely different kind.
WSJ: If you’d had a family and children to look after, would you still have been able to take up this job?Ms. Rajawat: I have been able to do it because I have my family’s support. I am single, but there have been so many women who have been able to do things despite having families to look after. If there is family support, it is easy to do a lot of things.A long, long way have we come since that summer when my aunt sat crying. Here is to hoping that it is a much shorter distance ahead.
WSJ: As a woman leader, what message would you give to young girls and other working women?Ms. Rajawat: I think each one of us is a leader in our own capacity. We just need to realize that. As women, we have tremendous inner strength which enables us to take on multiple roles and do well even as we stretch beyond our comfort zones.
9 comments:
Kudos to this lady for picking up such a noble cause.
I always joke with my working friends - we should have left all this career, ambition, being partners and equal in marriage, philosophy aside and should have married wealthy men who could pay for our hobbies and passions (and maids :)). We would then have all the time in the world to be with our children as much as we desired :) :).
It's a constant struggle to manage work and life and kids. It's sad when males around me are not sensitive and understanding. It seems they don't support the growth of women in professional areas coz they don't help us with flexibility, or perks that would make our life easy.
BUT, as Chhavi said, we have tremendous inner strength that can make us stretch and go beyond what can be imagined.
Great post!!!! And I'm glad Ramesh and you are not "one of those men".
I will admit right away that it is enormous pressure, on a daily basis, for a woman to carry out the multiple roles she has in the contemporary world.
From your blogging, it seems like you are doing quite well managing them all ... cool!
And, yes, thanks for the compliments ;)
Yes, women have always had it tougher, but I think its now starting to get overblown. Things have changed a lot and the stereotype of the lazy man who is insensitive is no longer true. With education has come a lot of change. Of course there are many heartless men, just as there are many senseless women - I don't think outrageous behaviour is gender specific (you only have to watch 30 seconds of an Indian soap for proof).
The issue has moved on to the institutional challenges a couple faces (note - not just women) in bringing up children. The modern globalised, 24 hour career demands does not simply sit with raising children. Given the centuries old "division of labour" it is the woman who is forced to give up the career. This is a profound sociological problem - good professors in elite universities might like to apply their minds to this :):)
I don't think the issue is overblown at all. While it is true that the old stereotype of the man is rapidly going away with education, the goal posts are always moved some more for women. That is another topic for another day!
Yes, this is becoming one serious problem for all kinds of institutions, including corporations and universities. In higher education, some disciplines are notoriously anti-women not because they systematically discriminate as they once used to, but because a pregnancy, for instance, can set behind a woman's career by more than merely a few months of carrying and delivering the baby.
Having said all those, I will also note that to some extent this is also an issue in which individuals have a choice. People--men and women alike--need to ask themselves what purpose is served by the 24x7 career demands you write about. I have discussed that a lot in many of my blog posts and, so, shall not repeat them here ;)
Hmm.. I am actually wondering - i think Ramesh is correct -about the issue being overblown. I think in India we are a lot more equal in many sections of the population. Out here, in Europe -I find the only women working in somewhat demanding roles are asians. Very very few european women take on serious jobs. In fact i was quite amused, when a dutch gentlemen was surprised that my daughter(being a girl -obviously!!) had chosen high level Math in her IB program -and it is a fact that in the few years earlier and after the only girls who had high level math were indians (or Chinese/ Taiwanese).. They dont expect girls to be very academic or career oriented. But it is not a chauvinistic society either.
I still find the indian men a little more unwilling to pitch in at home than the rest- here again, there is a generation -the one my age is bad at that.. My parents and their peers were more sensitive and i find quite often the younger ones- now in thier 30's also more equal...
When i look more closely in my generation, It is not a man-woman thing i tend to think... Who's more suited to do what and how much stress can you deal with -rather what kind of stress can you deal with : these are the questions to ask yourself.. I have to admit i find many men who are very respectful of the woman at home, and a few men who'd go a long way to support the wife in her career.. I even have a cousin who is a stay home dad, having retired from merchant navy... I really feel sorry for all those men who do so much to make that difference.
I think it is time to see the those who 'lean-in' do it consciously and out of willingness more often than not.
Ramesh and Indu - I don't think the situation is overblown - there are real issues for which no policies, infrastructure are in place. Giving just one example - finding "good" daycare for children is a nightmare (atleast in India and US). Unless u have that, how can the couple go to work?
Speaking of men who help - you are right. My husband does 50% of the work at home, if not more. I really admire him for that. My dad, now retired, actually works a lot more than my mom in the house. For all the hard work she did as a homemaker all our lives, she sure is being treated very well by dad and us as she ages.
But guess what - whenever we are discussing a difficult circumstance that has come up because both of us work, my husband (and most other men I know) immediately suggest that we (women) have a choice to quit working and stay home. It's never "one of us" or them. It's always the woman who is asked to compromise.
Hmmm ... I don't agree with you, Indu, when you wrote that "in India we are a lot more equal in many sections of the population" ... I will bet all the pennies I own that balancing the work-home demands are less burdensome for the career woman in W. Europe or in N. America than in India.
Where I split with Shachi is when she brings in the logistical issues like childcare ... to me, all those issues need to be factored in by the woman (and the father) even before deciding to have children. Which is why I keep going back to my bottom-line (I am being consistent here!) that people need to figure out for themselves why is that they do what they do, and what exactly it is that they want out of life, without expecting society (extended family, government, whatever you want to call it) to bear the costs of their decisions to have children.
Back in California, when I was much, much younger, a colleague, who had just broken through into the three-oh, and his wife were expecting a kid. They did the calculations and decided that they and the baby will be better off if the wife quit her work, which is what she did. I have a faculty colleague here who is more of the primary caregiver of the children because his wife is a Nike executive with the 24x7 load that Ramesh referred to.
So, there ... ;)
Sriram - how can you figure out childcare before the child is born? If you are talking in terms of money, fortunately, we can afford it. Even the most expensive one. But that does not necessarily mean it's the best one. Also, each child has different needs...he/she won't adjust anywhere YOU decide to put him/her.
It's a lot of trial and error and lack of empathetic caring individuals in this profession is a reality - same like having good teachers in public schools. If they pay teachers and caregivers/daycare providers as much as engineers get paid, the situation would be different.
Also, the examples that you quote - whoever quits and stays home is making a huge compromise in terms of career. Agree that for raising children you need to do that, but there are significant issues when this person who stayed home for xx years wants to get back into the workforce. I know of friends who did the same and now want to work (coz kids are older and in school and don't need them all day at home) but are struggling to find decent jobs. So, it's not as easy as figuring out your finances and deciding to quit - there are real, long term implications which also need to be considered. I am not even touching the fact on how happy parents would be making these choices to stay home, what it does to their self esteem and confidence, how it strains the couples relationship, etc etc.
Oh, with what you have written, Shachi, there is absolutely nothing to disagree. It is one huge decision to make. And, as a former colleague told me many years ago, "when you become a parent, you are a parent for the rest of your life." So, the decision to have a child is not one that affects merely a couple of years ...
Everything you write about is exactly why people need to spend a great deal of time thinking about whether or not they want to have kids, and the number of kids they want to have. Even when they think through, I bet you will agree with me that the hassles they factor in will be a tremendous underestimate.
The decision-making involves tremendous tradeoffs. You and I and Ramesh and Indu and a gazillion others grew up in an environment where such thought processes and tradeoffs were precluded by the highly restricted role for women. It was like in the old USSR--anything not forbidden was banned. So, women stayed home, while the man pursued a career, even if the woman was the more talented and accomplished one. Keep in mind that staying home did not mean checking into a spa--the daily routines of cooking and cleaning and wiping the baby's butt and washing and entertaining and taking care of the sick ones and the elders and .... it perhaps was way more work than what the man did over his entire career.
So, can women really have it all? I suspect the answer is tough to swallow, which is why we frantically look in different directions for something that will get us out of the tradeoffs involved. As far as I am concerned, those tradeoffs are the individual woman's to make. The old ways of society making the decisions for women were awful, and some of those practices continue even now. But, yes, tradeoffs mean there are costs involved.
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