Every now and then, there is a reel, a post, a discussion that brings me back to the fight that women are fighting to feel heard, be respected and allowed to be successful. Some appeal, some demand and some advice. There are some who talk about the support they have received from their family, friends and lives. However, there are days when I feel every girl is fighting a battle, in one way or other.
[My comments here might read like I am generalizing, but I am not. I write what I see, observe, and question. I don’t know the whole story and I don’t claim to]
I am hating the fact that everyone around me portrays a woman as bechaari or abla naari. And women themselves. Every woman is fighting for her “rights”. Are all the women really that repressed? Are all the women that sad and angry? What are they angry for? That their parents and husbands don’t want them to take financial responsibility (to go out and work hard)? Isn’t that the purpose of earning - to earn so much that one doesn’t have to work another day? Don’t men feel the burden of financial responsibility on them? Sure, a woman is taught all her life to be satisfied with whatever her husband can provide. Even if it’s less than what she could have provided herself. But men don’t get the financial support they need from their wife. They don’t get the choice between being at home and taking up financial responsibility. But don’t men (husband or father-in-law) only stop women from supporting? Or maybe that’s only true for rich men who don’t feel the need for women to take up financial responsibility. Are all husbands able to provide everything a woman desires? Or is it not about money or sharing the financial responsibility but respect? About liberty to make one’s own decisions? Fulfilling their own desires? Having their own identity? Is it that women want to show men that they could do what a man can, so they get the respect they deserve for preserving a family, for being a “homemaker”? And in trying to be deserving of that respect that she so deeply desires has taken even a greater challenge to prove herself like she always does? Putting in more effort than is required? Why are men so reluctant to give up control when they feel that a woman’s life is easy? By sharing the financial responsibility, aren’t they who stand to win a lot? What is the reluctance about? Are they afraid of losing respect as they don’t respect what women have been doing for so many years? Maybe the fight is not about working or not working. Earning or not earning. Maybe men are scared that they will be treated the same way they have treated women if they lose control.
In the book “Sapiens”, Author Yuval Noah Harari has a section dedicated to understanding the difference between a man and a woman. He has tried to reason why men were thought superior to women. He has explained the possible reasons like physical strength and child-bearing capabilities of women, and events in history like the rise in agriculture and the role of language that led to the difference in thoughts. Even though he himself questions his explanations, he concedes that patriarchial society has been a stable society to live in. Even though the society is stable, he doesn’t shy away from accepting that one of the disadvantages of patriarchial society is the oppression of women. Would a matriarchial society be stable and free of oppression? or does society really need an identity or clear hierarchies and roles to be stable?