The title of this article might come off as too inflammatory, but online forums have proved it right, time and again. Social media trends are filled with debates trying to prove women’s inferiority.
Basic biology states that physical strength means muscle power. Also, adrenaline is used to demonstrate the need for sports and fighting. Many scientific theories have proved more muscle means more power, which biologically makes women relatively weaker. Traditionally, men have used this power to deal with heavy loads, construction or manual labour jobs.
As far as the agricultural job is considered, using muscle power has brought meaning and difference to both men and women. In relation to gender norms, men have traditionally been associated with heavier jobs of lifting and construction, whereas women have been limited to the four walls of their houses to perform ‘softer’ jobs.
To all the men who constantly belittle women, how have your ‘strong muscles’ been any good for women? Even if you are the strongest of all, how does it lead to a better life till the end? Even if you earn a lot of money, does it lead to a quality life where you feel more content and happy? You glorify war and aggressively watch sports to fulfil your adrenaline need. For all we know, casualties of war on both sides have affected women as severely as prisoners of war.
In today’s world, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other countries are at war for their religious or other ideologies. Wars have been glorified, women have been treated inhumanely and treated like dummies. This is despite the fact that women have the ability to carry a human being inside them, they can perform manual labour and walk miles bleeding profusely for 5 days. The glorified power of men has never helped humanity much.
Men pride on the invention and discoveries they have made. It is quoted that men are relatively better at the same than women, leading to fewer women in the sciences. Sometimes, biology has been credited as the reason for men being superior in intelligence. They use their intelligence to prove to the world that they are superior and more important. In this process, they achieve status or power but expect women to be in awe of their power and status in society.
Whenever a wife uses her husband’s power and authority, she is ridiculed by her husband behind her back by cracking jokes on how women control the husband’s life. Traditionally, men have had to give more attention to their work, instead of their family. Einstein never had a great relationship with his children as he was always busy. His wife who was also a scientist but, had to forgo her career because of her children.
Men are considered to be emotionally stronger than their counterparts. My husband read an article online where men were proved to be emotionally superior using scientific methods. He then commented to me, trying to be funny (but was serious), that he is emotionally more intelligent that me. I did not reply because I had not read the article at that time. Upon reading the article, I discovered that it said children need to be raised by people who have a high EQ.
I then told my husband that he was right since science was involved, but since the article also emphasises the need for caregivers to be emotionally intelligent, he could take care of the children and I could leave the house – since I was of no more use to him. I had been proven to be less emotionally intelligent by this article.
The result? He retracted his statement and after a long fight and also accepted that he wasn’t ready to commit to the children more than his job. If somebody is sharp enough, they will realize that research like this is rarely based on genes to test someone’s EQ, but on the observations made on the basis of the test taken. Even then, these observations are linked to DNA without any valid reason. In science, it has been assumed if a behaviour is prevalent, it is linked to DNA, though no gene has been identified for the behaviour yet.
No one seems to object that the studies are usually conducted on a very limited number of people, which can never be replicated for the entire world. But still, science keeps going because men, who are initiators of these studies, are superior in intelligence than women.
These men do not care about women even a little bit, even for the women in their own lives. Jobs were initially created to ensure that a breadwinner could earn for their family productively. But now, they have just become misogynist tools to prove one’s greatness to the world.
Men have always been free to pursue their dreams, but even today, a woman’s desire is stupidity because she has to produce children, she cannot have other desires.
The feminist movement has given a greater degree of freedom to women. But, this freedom has become more easily accessible in the last 50 to 70 years. It is constantly mentioned that women are earning more graduate degrees and are entering technical fields with a higher frequency than men. These are just recent trends which will yield results in the next 100 years. Men did not perform scientific inventions and discoveries in just 50-70 years of stand alone research. Scientific progress credited to men has come about due to the freedom to pursue any career they want.
This century has made laws to provide equal opportunities to both men and women. This has also resulted in men being less satisfied because they are forced to acknowledge children as their responsibility also. In third-world countries, high divorce rates usually lead to the mother obtaining a child’s custody. Any kind of dissatisfaction is directed towards child care money. In India, the alleged misuse of rape and dowry laws has caused quite a stir.
Family can be ignored, but a chance to be popular, to be superior or to show off to society cannot be ignored. Talk to a man, he wants money as a primary objective not to have a comfortable life, but to show off to society. He even wants a beautiful wife not to have a good life together, but to show off to society that he is the owner of a beautiful woman who everybody else wants. Woman is a commodity who is gathered to show off to society, to make friends and colleagues.
Many young men in India are so full of themselves that while intending to get married, they brand themselves as someone who is intelligent, rich and strong and try to attract beautiful women based on these traits only. They never talk about who they really are. These accomplishments mean nothing more to them than having a good social life. People like this are only concerned about their accomplishments so that the women in their lives also judge them based on these traits. But when these judgments take money away from them, then women are blamed for selfish and unreasonable expectations.
For a man, dignity is important as is constantly portrayed in TV and social media, but the dignity of woman is not important. Anyone can say ‘whore,’ ‘prostitute’ or any other abusive word at any time to a woman. Should she register a complaint, she is labelled as ‘too sensitive,’ ‘liar,’ ‘life destroyer,’ ‘dishonest’ or ‘selfish.’ Women who are actually engaged in sex work live a life of extreme risk, but a man who is accused of rape or being a wife beater faces no judgment,
It is now argued that men live a more difficult life than women. Even if this may be true, it is the virtue of a job or a war which they do not want to change. No man, before creating a job, asked a woman, if the job was required or not. Every kind of work, whether manual labour, construction or sports or business has been created to boost the ego of men and proving to the world that he is the most important person and must gain power and wealth. These things barely increase the quality of life but give the power to do anything, entailing making women slaves, rather than have meaningful relationships. All this to boost one’s own image in society.
Lastly, women are blamed for all difficulties in life. She does not take care of the children. She does not cook for me. She keeps all the money I earn. But the truth is, you do not want to accept women as human beings who has more in common with you than differences, who can be as evil and as bad as you can be. She can break laws too, she at times has the need to defend herself, she also needs to assert her dominance, she has needs to use her abilities without being told she is the inferior sex and she also needs to be taken care of, just like men.
Yet, a woman is just a good caretaker as long as it suits the needs of a husband. But hey! Who is asking? No man asks a woman before making a law! After all, woman is the weaker sex and she is not important at all as a human being, other than being a slave or producing children.