"Woman! You’ve got owned!"

Women in India have come a long way from Child marriages and Sati rituals to Independent life and Equal rights. There are several laws protecting women and empowerment of women has become the biggest goal of the millennium in bridging the gap towards development of the country. Women now have the opportunity to hold high profile portfolios in politics or to run huge businesses. So, can we now say that women are happy and are successful in attaining equal status as men in the society? 

There is a girl, who even today begs her father to study fashion designing instead of engineering. But her father wants her to do engineering because she is brilliant at math, it costs lesser to do engineering, the chances of her placement or that of studying abroad further are higher and that in turn she will find the best suitable groom with this kind of profile, whereas, fashion designing is a very expensive choice with absolutely uncertain future. This explanation seems logically correct.

This situation as opposed to the situation where her father doesn’t allow her to study after 10^th standard, doesn’t allow her to go out of the house and gets her married at 18, is quite advanced and meaningful. However, if we look at the outcome, an 18 year old, minimally educated, married woman is not quite happy with her life and so is a 21 year old Engineer working in a multi-national company fulfilling her father’s dream. We would probably have had a happy and successful 19 year old great designer in the lines of Ritu Kumar or Kanika Goyal if only she pursued her dream.

We have advanced but women are still getting owned by parents’ choices.

Another woman, who graduated but was never interested in studies, got recently married to a well-settled NRI groom and left her whole world to go to his world in a foreign land. Her parents are super happy that she married a groom of their choice and they genuinely believe that she will have a better life abroad. Her husband earns a handsome salary but he has to pay mortgages on their home, cars and for maintaining their residency status in that country. He also has responsibilities to fulfil towards his parents and siblings back home in India.

He then suggests that his wife should work there so that they can continue to live a luxurious life and also because all his friends’ wives are working. He loves her, takes her out to many places and keeps her happy but he has expectations. She struggles with the job hunt and works very hard to keep up with the growing competition. She never had the intention to work. She dreamed of being a perfect homemaker. To keep up with the growing expectation of her husband, she faces a number of interviews and gets rejected everywhere and then she becomes chronically depressed for being a loser.

This situation as opposed to the situation where the husband mistreats her, abuses her, tortures her in a foreign land to satisfy his ego and keeps her isolated from all social interactions, is definitely nicer and forward. However, if she does not have to face such unrealistic expectations and if she has the freedom to do what she can do the best, she would have probably developed a new business model based out of her homemaker niche. She could have become a YouTube star and even earned a lot of money in the process.

We have advanced but women are still getting owned by spouse’s expectations.

A very well educated and successful career woman, who is married to an average businessman, is pregnant with their first baby. Unfortunately, the baby had developmental issues and was diagnosed as autistic. This new mother has no idea what she is dealing with. Her husband asks her to quit working to take care of this special child because the society believes that only a mother can give good care to a child. He says he’d provide well for them and that he’d take care of all financial requirements because that is believed to be the responsibility of a man.

Unwillingly, she quits her job and tends to her child in every possible way. She works together with care givers, therapists and teachers to help their child become normal again. Every minute of every day, she spends towards her baby with absolutely no time for herself or for her husband. The husband spends lesser and lesser time with his now dysfunctional family under the premise that he is working harder for paying all bills. Extended family, friends and neighbours all appreciate the man for bearing the burden but they advise her on what more she can do to make things better for the kid. Her mother-in-law also suggests having another child so that the first child can learn from the second.

This situation as opposed to the situation where the husband and in-laws blame the wife for begetting such an anomalous child, husband disowning the child and its mother, people in the community defaming her as the bad luck (shani / panvati) upon the family, is much more mature and sensible. However, if we look at this situation more practically, she shouldn’t have to quit her work and give up her career for the sake of the child. The responsibilities could have been shared more appropriately in a fashion where both get to take care of the child as well as advance their careers. She could have probably provided better financially while he could have probably given better care to the child.

We have advanced but women are still getting owned by societal pressures.

Today, certain bigger social evils against women still persist, like female infanticides, human trafficking, sexual harassment, domestic violence, dowry deaths, etc., and that is very unfortunate. But earlier there were also things like, women not being allowed to get educated as much as men, women being meant to only take care of household chores and not having a say in financial matters, woman not being allowed to go out of the house by herself, woman’s only job being bearing children and raising them well. Women were only treated as those invisible creatures, who would make everything right and still peek somewhere in the corner without asking for anything in return.

In spirit we have bridged a lot of gaps, but we are not even nearly there when it comes to gender equality. It is still the case that “Men and Women are equal, but Men are more equal than Women”. Clearly the situation is not as bleak as five decades ago. But that doesn’t mean we have achieved anything yet. Women deserve more. They do not need a Taj Mahal after they die; they need some respect when they are alive. They need the freedom to be able to make their choices and live by them. An honest advice to all: Do not trample on the simple joys of a woman because you have better plans for her. She is very much capable of making her choices and taking her decisions. Respect that!