STORY WRITING COMPETITION

 WOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE  

(with emphasis on marital stereotypes)

By Maryam Chauhan

"There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."

- Virginia Woolf

Robbing a human of his potential is the worst of all thefts. Butchering someone’s dreams is a murder par the heights of brutuality, it demands apathy akin to that of a seasoned assassin. Sucking the ‘marrow of life’ out of a living being and condemning him to a life of utter monotony and choking boundaries is similar to slow, cold torture that is meant to bleed a human dry of his very essence of being alive. Ancient India used to perceive ‘steya’ (theft) and ‘hinsa’ (violence) as the worst of all sins and here we are, living in an India where these

injustices are the norm.

Now I request my readers to kindly switch all the pronouns used in the above paragraph from ‘him’ to ‘her’. I used male pronouns in the dim hope that it might make a difference, it might stir some empathy and it might dawn on your conscience that the above mentioned scenario is nothing but brute torment.

I was compelled to use male pronouns for women across the globe are living this grotesque reality, the whole wide world is a witness to how their life is a continuous chain of chokes and quiets and stifles and weeps; yet this perpetual sinning goes unnoticed. Its existence is not perturbing to any but rather just the ‘normal’. Its opposition on the contrary is what provokes fierce reactions of resistance.

Women being restrained to the confines of their homes with all doors of opportunities shut on their faces with the big bolts of relations, familial responsibilities, stereotypes and off course the Indian refrain - ‘log kya kahenge’ reminds me oft of this classic line from a novel of

Harper lee -

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember, it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

As of today, the percentage of Indian women in the labour force stands at 41.7% as against a 78.8% participation rate of men. This itself is a significant indicator of the massive gender gap persistent in India, but unfortunately the story doesn’t end here; According to various studies and reports, women hold only around 18-36% of senior leadership roles in corporate India. This shows how appropriately half the population of this country is being represented!

The union cabinet then is another beacon of the triumph of misogyny as currently there are not more than 7 women ministers in the highest policy making body in India as against 65 male ministers. Just ponder for a second over how utterly shameful a fact this is! If you Ask me, a lot. Do the women of this modern, independent, apparently ‘developing’ India deserve this? As I see the situation now, I have come to believe that the ‘last man in the que’ theory has been wrongly phrased for at the end of this line to the doorway of progress would not be

a man, but a woman, or rather, ‘the women’, collectively.

Recently, a particular movie by the name of ‘laapata ladies’ has bursted the biggest bubble of delusion entrapping the womenfolk of this country since countless centuries with one single dialogue, wherein its rightly stated that the biggest fraud ever in this country has been committed against its women by the society around them when their whole life is subjected to pertain to one phrase, one particular description or banner of chastity i.e ‘bhale ghar ki bahu-betiyan’.

Women are made to believe that the sole purpose of their life is to set up house, serve its elders, be submissive to the ‘divine species’ called ‘husband’ and provide her services towards the continuity of ‘his’ family line. They are accustomed to such a thought process that if they do something for themselves , they feel guilt, they feel that they are wronging their ethos and crossing the boundaries of righteousness. Modernity is an evil in their eyes for they never even are given the right to hold their own opinion, they learn to nod their heads at all orders and cast it down on needless scoldings, they learn to lower their voices to an unheard decibel and suppress their laughs to forced shy smiles.

Marriage in India is akin to bondage for life for many women even today. They are put behind the bars of silence for the crime of innocence.

When I see the ‘educated’ women of India also, accepting the confines of their husband’s home, it always reminds me of one particular response of an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. A journalist once asked her when will there be enough women judges on the US Supreme Court and Her reply was “when there are 9” and she further stated that “well, there have been 9 men in this position and nobody has ever raised a question about that.”

On the same line, it is ideally time for women to aspire to dominate and take over the reins of the working of the global order and here we are, still struggling to achieve bare minimum equality. Marriage is not supposed to be a fall of curtains on all the dreams and aspirations of women. It is high time the Indian Society understood this basic fact. It's time for patriarchy to take a backseat and watch how great a progress was it acting as a hindrance to, its time for women to step out and step up.

Women are the backbone of any civilization; we need both the halves of our population working towards the making of a better India with equal zest, in perfect synch and with equal toil and equal ease.

The first step towards the coming about of this equality would be the reformation of our homes; The core issue lies in the systemic expectation that women should manage two concurrent roles: one paid and professional, the other domestic and involuntarily imposed. Why should an educated man, after a demanding workday, enjoy the privilege of rest, while a woman, who may be equally or better qualified - return home, sometimes suffering from debilitating conditions like menstrual cramps, only to commence her second shift of unpaid domestic labour?

This systemic inequity is unacceptable and requires fundamental change, beginning within the domestic sphere. Women require supportive families, necessitating better education and increased awareness of men regarding shared responsibility.

The consequence of this burden is the limitation of female career progression. The critical age for professional elevation often overlaps with the struggle against pregnancy and postpartum mental health challenges. Later, at the height of their careers, women grapple with menopause, frequently facing total insensitivity from family members and coworkers. This double burden remains a profound barrier to achieving gender parity in high-ranking positions.

We need a better understanding of the biological travails that women go through. We need to create safer and happier homes as well as work places for them to excel according to their merit and not be taken back just for the wrong of being born with an XX chromosome.

Let us not forget:

"Woman is the compass of society."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe