Women and home

If you read my post yesterday, you would have got a glimpse of how women are changing in the workplace in India – and, in the process, changing India’s work culture. This change, happily, at least for women at large, has been so intrinsic to the woman’s role and self-worth, that it has entered and impacted the woman’s home as well.

For instance, it has given the woman a sense of choice. No longer does she feel the need to follow rules laid out by her parents or tradition – rather deciding to create a few rules of her own to improve her circumstances. The urban woman today weighs her options independently – like a man – or, at best, along with her peer group.

Choice of education or employment is one thing, choosing a life partner is another. Today, increasingly, women are getting married by personal choice rather than through arranged marriages. They are entering into inter-caste and inter-religion marriages by choosing their own partners, rather than relying on their parents’ whims or methods of selection and approval. Even what they consider “marriageable age” seems to have moved up the timeline to the 26-30 years of age group, sometimes even later, from the traditional concept of the bride under 25 years of age.

Still, women feel there is much room for improvement. Married women are conditioned by their parents and society to accept their roles as subordinates to their husbands, their home and their children. Women still find it difficult to shed their role as housewife or mother because “the primary duty of the woman is her home.” Married working women carry a dual responsibility of employee and housewife – rushing home to cook dinner for the waiting family.

Unmarried women are better off as their responsibilities at home are less binding. However, they still have to break through constraints against dress codes or socialising freely in the company of their own choice. Bringing home a male friend, for instance, is still considered taboo in most families. Sometimes, so is something as simple as speaking freely in an open forum. Parents – and brothers – at home may accept this show of independence, but what will the neighbours think?

Mind you, all of what I’ve described so far is really a reflection of women from the upper and upper-middle class urban families. The acceptance of modern, Western norms of behaviour in the Indian woman becomes less visible as you go down the socio-economic strata. In lower income groups it gets tougher for women to break through existing societal patterns. But times are changing, and we can all feel the waves catching up. Who knows what will happen next!