#Celebrating the #breadwinner and the #homemaker

Sometime back some of my working women friends got together over a cup of tea. Out of the many things we discussed, there was one thing that got me thinking. We found that a lot of women decide not to work. The reasons could be marriage, bringing up children, taking care of parents, or looking after the studies of the teenager child. While we all agree that being there for your kids and maintaining a home is definitely important, I wonder if it is really necessary to remove oneself completely from the economic work-force to do that. And the women who opt out of a career are often highly and professionally qualified- doctors, engineers, chartered accountants, doctorates, management post graduates and the likes of them.

In yester years some women worked as the family needed the income. Thank God, today many families are economically stable and women do not really need to work to supplement the family income. But does that justify the complete withdrawal of fifty percent of the healthy enlightened population of a country from the workforce? I do not know, but what I think is, if more and more women step back and do not make good and
economic use of their education won’t there be some repercussions over time? What if society takes a collective call to not educate women or perhaps not educate women beyond a set limit? It might consider it a waste of the country’s scarce resources to educate women if it is proved again and again that she would not put such education to its appropriate use. I shudder in fear of such a day!

If we look at the government colleges in India, our IITs, NITs, IIMs, Government medical colleges, veterinary colleges, they are highly subsidized. As taxpayers we fund them, in the hope that the brightest of our students can study there and contribute to India’s progress and well-being. Statistics show that an almost equal number of young girls and boys enter these colleges every year. As parents, we too do not differentiate between our sons and daughters. We urge both to follow their dreams! Then when our young girls decide not to work, not to be economically productive, not to put their qualifications to good use- whatever be the compelling reason for this, what do we as a society do? Absolutely nothing to help! We glamourise these reasons, glorify the women’s “sacrifice” and justify this exit on the grounds of marriage, child bearing & rearing or family commitments.

Sometime back I met a friend. She is quite a brilliant lady and I urged her to do join back work. She said, that her husband would never agree, he would say that only after their girls go off to engineering or medical college, could she do anything she wanted. It was at the tip of my tongue to ask, why was he so intent on sending his daughters for engineering or medicine. What if they got husbands like him who insisted that they stay at home till their children went to engineering college! Why waste so much money, both theirs and the tax-payers? Why waste so much effort and energy? Why waste the girls’ dreams and ambition? But for the fear of losing her friendship I said nothing.

We have come across some people who have not made a career out of their educational qualifications. We have seen doctors turn writers on mythology, chefs become actors, engineers and MBAs become fiction writers, and the list goes on. But these are aberrations. Women opting out of the workforce seems to be a norm, no one expresses surprise, no one bats an eyelid, it is deemed expected!

I know it is tough to be a working woman, especially a working mom. In a work atmosphere traditionally built by men, it is tough to establish that it is possible to perform well without being in office for ever, it is possible to network without taking smoking breaks, it is possible to be a go-getter without being alpha! Similarly, in a home atmosphere built traditionally by women who did not go out to work, it is equally tough to establish that the children can grow up to be loving, mature and balanced adults even if mom does not cook everyday or if mom picks them up from day-care rather than being at home when they arrive, it is possible to keep the house neat without being there to monitor the hired help. And even if one juggles all this, there is no trophy except the woman’s own satisfaction ! So, sometimes it is just easier to exit, to give up and be a homemaker.

I hate the word homemaker being applied to women. Homemaker and breadwinner need to be just roles- one often overlapping the other. If all women decided to work, our infrastructure would have to keep pace. There would be good quality day care even for sick children, offices would have private rooms for the nursing mother, dedicated parking for pregnant women and so on. Quitting work would cease to be an alternative. Sometimes I also imagine a situation where all women decide not to work. There would be only male nurses, male gynecologists, male beauticians, male nannies and I think no woman would want a situation like that.

I entreat all women to not give up. We have slogged so much for every mark in our exams. We have shed blood and tears over our degrees and qualifications that we proudly hold. Lets not bring in a day where society decides to favour a male over a female for a seat in a professional course because it sees more value in educating the male than the female. We have broken through the gender bias with generations of effort, we have succeeded to some extent. Lets not blow away this success by making a choice to contract ourselves to being a family care- giver and nothing beyond.

Hail womankind!