It’s time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change.
“Today there is no field where the women have not shown their worth. From holding highest public office in bureaucracy to holding highest political position, the women have shouldered all kinds of responsibilities with grand success. A lot of change has taken place, in their position in this man dominated society.
The women were the centre and foundation of the social and cultural life of the family. Home was the women’s sphere of activity. ‘Men make houses and women make homes’ is the traditional belief. With the political emancipation of India, the women of free India ushered into a new role.
Today the women enjoy equality of status, equality of opportunity with men. She became financially independent and economically sound, she became the major decision maker, and she became the policy maker in various new fields. She ventured into outer field, but the traditional views about her role as home maker, about! Her so called sacred duties of Mother, Sister, Wife, are still kept on demanding on her the women are divided between her official work and home duties. Her duties start from early in the morning with many responsibilities on her shoulder before going to office, like preparing breakfast, lunch, getting kids ready for school etc.
The working atmosphere in the offices, particularly, for the women is also not so congenial. Most of the male counterpart treat the woman an easy scope goat for fulfilling their sexual desires. The incident of intentional touching, double meaning dialogues, unwarranted comments, piercing in her private affairs are some of the common examples which create lot of irritation and make the women unnecessarily defensive. The incidents of one sider sexual advancement by the boss, staring at her body parts, alluring her with quick promotion in return, are generally to be faced by a working woman. With women entering into new fields, she become more vulnerable to the dangers like eve-teasing, sexual advancement, transfers, etc. The women can only explain to have frights and hardships experienced by her while working in office.
The problems of a career women are endless and peculiar and differ from place to place, office to office, and person to person. In this fast changing world, particularly the role being accepted and played by the women, the analysis is but necessary to find a suitable balance in order to save the career women from their ever increasing hardships.
It has become irrelevant to talk that traditional role played by the women, was a better course. The woman has her own personality, more confident, financially independent, accepting any kind of challenge, can no longer remain under the illogical dominance of man, but at the same time she suffers a lot mentally and physically divided between home and office.
Our society had been a male dominated society; the changes are gradually being digested. With necessity of time absences of joint families the financial independence of women are making the male absorb the change slowly but gradually. The actions initiated by the government against the eve-teasing, sexual harassment of working women, have also brought a lot off avourable change in the life of working women. In spite of all the hardships being faced by the working women, it must be noted that women have fought a great battle and are still fighting at their own against the fright and hardships faced by them and got remarkable success in every field of life.
AUTHOR : DRASHTI PATEL
PUBLISHED BY : SHWETA AGARWAL
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