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Here’s Why Women Need To Take Complete Charge Of Their Lives
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By Srishti Singh:
Have you ever had a conversation with a 40 or 50 year old woman which ended with statements like-
“Beta, don’t stop working after marriage” or
“One of the things I regret the most is depending too much on your Uncle, financially and otherwise”
If yes, then you might realize how important it is not to fall for ‘backups’; in simpler words, not being dependent on your father, husband or son for all important decisions. The concept of Disney princesses being bad role models for a young girl, is being debated worldwide, and not without a reason. Having been raised on a diet of feisty princesses, I know how hard it is to resist the temptation of a backup.
Being a girl, the topic of marriage is hard to avoid. In fact, most of us are somewhat obsessed with our weddings. Girls start planning their dream wedding well in advance. And mostly, we’re pretty vocal about it. However, do things like how you’re going to feed your family after marriage bother you? Do you worry about how you’ll be paying for rent, loans and insurance? Do you have a plan as to how to go about doing all these?
If yes, then good for you; these are responsibilities we can’t really avoid. However, if the answer to the above questions is no, then you most probably have fallen victim to the trap of backups. As women, we usually skip a part of reality because it’s taken care of by someone else. Before marriage, our dads take most decisions for us and after marriage it’s our husbands. We don’t have to worry about the ugly side of adult life, because someone else does that for us.
Why? Is it because we’re lazy? Or is it because we’ve gotten used to being taken care of? If that’s the reality, then isn’t it justified when our parents suggest or rather, force us to marry early? After all, we don’t want to shoulder some major adult responsibilities and our dads aren’t getting younger with each passing year. We’re seeing a shift in women’s education. More and more women are applying for STEM subjects instead of Humanities. It’s good for workplace diversity as well as women’s welfare.
However, if we’re still dependent on our backups, then can it really be seen as a change? The point of education is making us strong, empowered and independent adults. But if we still see ourselves as contributors, rather than breadwinners, then is the purpose really met? In that case, isn’t our education nothing but ‘ornamental’?
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Parvandh Gowadia
Srishti Singh, if you seriously believe what you say in the last line then, you are seriously underestimating womanhood. It is not easy being a woman and nor is it easy being a man. Men and women are equals but not the same. A question though, for your independent mind. When you become independent of something, what happens to the thing you become independent off? Modern society is so obsessed with rights that people forget their duties. Men are supposed to be responsible for protection and providence. More then that it is their duty to do so. If they fail in it they may not be considered men in my eyes. But if you don’t need me to perform my duties, then I don’t have responsibilities. And that is a very precarious position to put any society in. A position where half the population is redundant, so to speak.
Women, especially feminist, have always stated that men are threatened by women’s capacity to create life. That all of man’s great achievements were a competition against woman’s capacity to create an autonomous being. Okay, lets agree for sake of argument, this is true, then with great power of creating life comes the even greater responsibility of nurturing it. Hence it is a duty of a woman to be there for the life she created. Nobody is capable of doing everything. Hence exists men and women. Never underestimate the world of men, it is not as easy as women claim it to be. Education and literacy are two completely different things. A educated person is a person who has the capacity to utilizes his/her knowledge that he/she has gained. A literate person however is someone who just knows something. My father is the most educated man I know, he can talk about politics, to psychology, to philosophy, to economics and his area of expertise body building in great depth and he is only SSC pass. I know many Masters who aren’t half as capable as he in such vast number of topics. And an educated person can never be ‘ornamental’. The children of educated parents will always be evident. Educated mother more so. Why? Because the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Don’t ever underestimate the importance of a woman and the same is of men. That is mutual respect. If you have a son, one day, or already do then he will grow up to see that women do everything and that he can just kick back and be as reckless as he wants and when he marries a woman who is incapable of doing what he saw his mother do, he will resent it. Empowerment doesn’t mean to take charge of everything. Empowerment means utilizing your education to best fulfill your responsibilities otherwise you are just replacing male tyranny with female tyranny. Notice that I did not use “men tyranny” or “women tyranny”, because tyrants don’t deserve to be called either. Man and Woman are titles, according to me, they have to be earned by performing duties towards one another not trying to surpass eachother.
Raj
Don’t get married and don’t have kids. Don’t compromise.